Reminiscences 

of the 

Santiago Campaign 



By 

JOHN BIGELOW. Jr. 

\l\ 10 in O. 5. f'AVALRY 
All HOB OF "THE PRINCIPLES OF STRATEGY' 



WITH A MAP 




N E W 


YORK 


AND 


LONDON 


HARPER & 


BROTHERS 


PUBLISHERS 






] 


899 








WOc 















CONTENTS 



CHAP. F\ . 

1 V 

I. Joining ra n i 

1 1, i amp Thom is. Georgia 9 

in. By Rau ro Lakei ind, Florida -: 

IV. In Camp ai Lakeland 3'* 

V. TO T ■■." I BA1 \--:> I MBAI K UION . . . . 44 

VI. On Transport in Tampa Bay 55 

VII. At Ska 70 

viii. Daiquiri :- 

IX. Las Guasimas 83 

X. Sevtlla 93 

XI. El 1 103 

XII. Under Fire 

XIII. San Juan iao 

xiv. W01 wded tag 

XV. In Dn ISION Hospi 1 ai 138 

XVI. In Gbnerai Hospitaj u- 

XVII. ToTampaBai ind I ■■•! 1 McPhkrson, Georgia 147 

xvm. 1 

XIX. Ri ■' 

XX. • ■' : 



P R E F A C E 



ON my return from the Cuban campaign in 
July last, I found the community into which I 
was thrown during my convalescence intensely 
interested in even- detail of the experience of 
any one who had participated in it. The space 
subsequently given in the public prints to the 
proceedings of the President's Commission for In- 
quiring into the Conduct of the War, has led my 
friends as well as some publishers to urge me to 
allow the general public to share such informa- 
tion about the campaign as my observation and 
experience enables me to impart. It is in defer- 
ence to these considerations that these pages, re- 
vised from my correspondence with my family, 
.ire now .submitted to the public. The)' make- 
no pretension to be a history of the late war. 
nor even of the campaign of Santiago, but sim- 
ply what the title implies — a narration of what 
an officer participating in that campaign 
felt, and thought, with such explanations and 
vstions as his observations and reflections 
prompted. 

v 



PR 1 

,. and equip- 

r two hundred and fifty 

bout twenty 

of war a thousand 

a temperate to 

ne month's no- 

dless confusion 

the rules and pre- 

In this narration 

• undue prominence to, 

v of the consequences of 

the contrary, if 

any value, pro- 

. and I hope it will be 

. it must ist mainly in 

thing that fell under 

. the recurrence of which 

the future should strive to 

I presumi 01 dis- 

• • | nsibility for 

rhere are tribunals for 

and ungracious duty 

whi culpable abuses 

• d to make due 

with which the 

1 upon the country. 

■ be ob- 

of the war, due 

'. ... . ' . • : 



P R EFAC I'. 

the enemy than to the strategic skill of our com- 
manders. It seems the more desirable, theref 

that every one who took part in this war should 
give the Government and the public the benefit 
of his observations. It is as wise to learn from 
our friends as from our enemies. 

J. R, Jr. 

Fort Clark, Texas, February 13, 1S99. 



R i; MINIS CENCES 

OF THE 

SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 



JOINING THE REGIMENT 

The gathering of the war clouds and our dec- 
laration of war found mc at the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, Boston, discharging the 

duties of a "Professor of Military Science and 
Tactics." officers of the Regular Army on de- 
tached service were being ordered to rejoin their 
iments; many had applied for such orders. 
For my part, I thought it improper for a regular 
soldier to volunteer unless volunteers were called 
for. 1 lc< »rdingly abstained for what seemed to 
me a long time from making an application for 
active service. At length I read in the papers 
that transports were 1» jil npa, 

and that the colored troop-, of which my regiment 

A 1 



NTIAGO CAMPAII - 

• . be all ordered 

. Still my 

. • ■ iiile the 

the 

| ft in it in Montana. 

I the Tenth Cavalry 

irk, and troops 

impa, Florida, to be 

invasion. Fearing that 

it be moved down there 

it me, I wrote to the 

rmy, requesting that 

iment. Next day I re- 

W • i 

Institute >>f 

• irders have 

'. the 

While the ex- 

• y, it is the in- 

you to the 

withdrawn, at the 

shall 



JOIN! NG THE R EG! M ENT 

The following day I received my order: 

Special Hi IDQTJ IRTERS Ol III! ARMY, 

Adji i \\ i -Gi m ral's Offh l . 
W \ 5HING roN, April -:' . 1898. 






I Extract] 

******* 

33. By direction of the President, Captain John Bige- 

low, Jr., Tenth Cavalry, is relieved, by the Secretary of 
War, from duty at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 
nology, Boston, Massachusetts, and will proceed to join 
his troop. The travel enjoined is necessary for the public 

service. 

******* 

By command of Major-General Miles. 
II. C. CORBIN, Adjutant-General. 

The order did not state where my regiment 
was, so I had to reflect and plan a little before 
proceeding to its execution. I had never received 
any official information of a movement of the 
regiment or any part of it from where I left it 
when I came East — Fort Custer and Fort Assin- 
niboine, Montana — months before. Ididnotknow 
whether the regiment had arrived at Chattanoo- 
»r, having arrived there, had gone on to Tampa 
Isewhere. But I was ordered from the head- 
quarters <>f the army to join my troop." A I 

\- ;iment of cavalry consists of tweh At 

this time two troops (Land M> "l each regiment were 

■ letons " that is. they had n< > enlisted men, and their 
offi< 1 Skeleton troop 

isted only on paper. 

3 



CAMPAIG N 

. 1 would have been 

it it, as to how 

I : If with the airy 

Captain ; for 

: leers of my 

- organ- 

that difficulty. 

n the larger and primary 

nt. I determined 

trail. Before 

[ had 1 • time to closi 

[nstitu! Technology, and 

vice. My efforts 

made me realize as I had 

a military man 

A British officer, or- 

into, or 

' ive store 

plete 

furniture, etc. — for 

[at any - 

ment in the 
'. :\ to me — 
.a do that. 

there was 

■ hat v. as suitable 

I had reason to be- 

• Washington, 

ibed 

y, therefore, 



JOINING THE REGIMENT 

to complete my cloth undress uniform by pro- 
viding myself with a pair of riding-trousers, cam- 
paign hat, gauntlets, and riding . The 

trou- : t me twice as much as they would 

have cost at a military post, and did not fit me. 
The cutter evidently went on the theory that 
ridin^-trouscrs are simply walking- trousers cut 
short and made to stick into a pair of boots. I 
did not know where to get a regulation camp a 
hat, except from the Quartermaster's Depart- 
ment of the United States Army. The red tape 
necessary to do that from Boston staggered me. 
I decided to wait until I found my regiment, 
trusting that 1 would find somewhere in its vi- 
cinity a depot at which I could purchase not 
only a campaign hat, but also a pair of gauntlets 
and riding-leggings. I had no mess outfit, but 
expected that I would find a mess already run- 
ning in the troop to which I should be assigned, 
and, if not, that 1 would be able to purchase one 
:er or from a dealer. I hoped 
likewise to provide myself on the spot with .. 
chairs, table, and other camp-furniture. 

I left Boston on a night train, Sunday, the 
i I . ■ : May. As I made my way next morning 
through the grand building of the State, War, 
and Navy 1 1 ipartments, to the office of the 
jutant- General, I found the halls and stairways 
alive with a motley crowd. I was struck by cer- 
tain male couples, the individuals of which con- 

5 



. . VGO c A M PAIGN 

ther, one being 
in the ways 

.long the lines of politics ; 
>h, with an air of blended 
which b< 

irmy promo- 

the dour which I 

the presence of the 

i - confronted by one of 

ning my salutation, 

ery busy, asked me 

being informed, 

and me his messen- 

rmed me that my 

the time 

ht be somewhere else, as troops 

tty briskly, especially be- 

. and Tampa. He advised 

tal Adjutant for 

1 i to join the 

I <>n his advi 

I msw er t 

: '98. 
D. < '. .■ 

I '• ' 

I that 
in kind (tare and 



JOl I HE REG] 

and mileage at the 
'. 
me transportati 

ter at Washingt : me tr . 

i, the m 
mau . where my :amped. 

I could not collect until I had com- 
] 
Leaving Washington that evening, I reac'. 
Chattanooga th the 

11, fine-! man, 

whom I recognized as Sergeant Ray, C 

the Tenth Cavalry, and learned from him 
there was no train to Lytle that would 
me there much before midnight. Had I been 
young and inexperienced, I would doubtless have 
waited for a train and gone out to camp that 
night. I would have found everybody 
and had I me one up to be admitted to 

a tent. The next morn:': .' .Id have star" 

Colonel by my early appearance and been 
laughed at by many of my brother officers for 
my extraordinary zeal. Anticipating all th:-. I 
: a hack and to what the dr 

If yund 
there a number of officers of rr. 
of D no 

" i .' ' the rate 

a mi! 



I tMPAK 

... to which ] 

i . . 

• ; iuntain 

•ins 
I, 1 contem- 
: :' amc 
• 

led with 
i \- 
r by, i 
imbularx 

It 1 remem- 
: the 
: an 



II 

A 

[ served in 1 

j 

1 

I 

. 



I AGO CAM PA I G N 

ide his servi peculiarly valu- 

] :: ,'tng com- 

the property 
the men. I made a blank form, 
le troop in a column on the 
ind the articles constituting the 
top, with four columns for 
Armed with this sheet, and accord- 
ant. I went through each 
ich article oppo- 
indi ited : 

ible. 

in troop. 
ned. 

; lired were mostly sad- 
■ ■ the chiefs ol 
ed with seeing that the 
tl ml k them to the tr< 
i repaired. The article 

n inventory and in- 

i were made 

v. hull were to 

Inch were missing. 

acted 

inothei The 

lade over again, be- 

I • they v. lost al divi- 



CAMP THO M A s. GEORGIA 

n headquarters. Even this second edition 
practically never filled. The bulk of what it 
called for was received, I believe, in the deten- 
tion camp at Montauk Point, after the campaign 

■ if Santiago. 

Supplies kept coming to the regiment at inter- 
vals in insufficient quantity to supply the whole 
regiment. Whenever they came they were di- 
vided among the several troops. Each troop 
was continually receipting for driblets of what it 
needed, and was never fully supplied. If a force 
of from fifty to one hundred men armed and 
equipped for field-service were called fur, it had 
to be made up from several troops. This, I think, 
might have been obviated by issuing supplies 
from regimental headquarters to a single troop 
at a time, or such number of troops as could be 
fully supplied. 

Many of the men had no rubber overcoat- or 
slickers (oiled canvas coats like sou'westers), there 
was no prospect of any being furnished by the 
ernment, and the Quartermaster's Department 
did not even have such an article for sale. 
derstanding that it was important for foreigners 
in the tropics to keep dry, and although I did 
not believe that a campaign would be started in 
Cuba until after the " rainy season," I I steps 

at once to procure slickers for the men who 
needed and wanted them. This I could only 
by getting them to contribute three tloll.tr- of 

1 1 



SANTIAGO I VMPAIGN 

• buy the 
.. . gements, 
summation, and 
d itined to 
1 provided for my 
d buying a rubber 

■ 

immer uniform. M< n 
the uniforms which 
Montana, t \ 
I" their 

nen looked trim 
riders, which 
from wearing on 
- they had diffi- 
5, The ( 
me, might is 
the blouse, and the 
.: them on duty. I saw 
:' duty, with- 
rs, in white 
hirts, Offi- 
. as a rule, 
had no insi 

on their 
ften 
• . 
I -I think it 

without 



1 bandages to 1 

. 
; 

- : - 

and 

the ~.han wh 

r and 

- - - 
saw 

a bale of h^; 

.5 a school I 

- 
C 

I 
separat 
tntf 

- :ale. I 

'3 



SAN 1 [AGO CAM PA [G N 

I to ta1 my regular turn 
practice patrolling and re- 
the oul 

tinst each other 
• rms of an at- 
i of the kind. 

that I d by company 

■ i in a few squadron and 
iw nothing in the nature 
wards the latter part of 
. the troop commanders 
rtion of the drill to 
and rear guard and out- 
laid one do in this way 
1 patrol 
iving been four 
; drill a day, I it 1 never drilled 
. myself, and did all 
• 1 was required to do, and prop- 
last two (.lays in 
hour and a half 

old battle- 

. iu ;a Park. 
1 six miles f. 

I < ' /.ion 

( upied part 

l-side. A 

I i ' 

. ar the top 

i ; 



CAM 1' THOMAS. (', I. o RGIA 

the tents of <>ur field and staff officers looked 
down on the line of tents of the troop officers 

and the lines of tents or streets of the several 
ips. About half a mile to our right was an- 
other regiment of cavalry, and about three-quar- 
of a mile to our left and front, hidden by the 
woods from our view, was a regiment of infantry. 
The details of our camp were substantially those 
prescribed in the drill regulations. The garbage 
was disposed of by throwing it into a hole about 
4x6x6 and covering it daily with a few inches 
of earth. This hole was about twenty feet from 
the cook fire. Portions were burned in the cook 
fire. The manure was carted into the woods, 
about two hundred yards from the picket-line, 
and dumped there. The drinking-water was ob- 
tained from a hydrant, ami seemed to be good. 
Water for washing was kept in barrels in each 
troop. It was common, however, for men to 
drink it. 

Back of our camp was a tower from which 
tourists could obtain a commanding view of the 
tie-field of Chickamauga, and all through the 
grounds were monuments, tablets, and other helps 
and inspirations to a study of the battle. But 1 
had little time or energy for reading or sight-see- 
ing. The camp l • far from any stream suit- 
able for bathing that I had to buy tubs for my 
men, paying for them out of the company fund. 
the bathing was done after dark, there- 
's 



[AGO CAMPAIGN 

mall tent to bathe in during the 

vcr the sur- 

whole squadron 

. point on a stream 

ind the men treated to a 

of foui held the horses 

until one of the latter had 

was pretty 

the men enjoyed it. splashing and 

mall boys. It was a fine 

tudy the physique of the colored 

.ere the admiring comments 

bed them with a 

I a little envy. The 

i brisk ti t. 

letion of my personal out- 

• nothing to be 

r othei : >m the | 

m individual My Lieu- 

with the officers of another 

his own. After 

iiv. I sent an order to 

nworth, Kansas, 

itfit," which 1 received 

'. I I be the best thin- of 

. n for the m< »ney 

e for three, and 

packed in an 

ind red 1 y a trap, 

fas! ned on the 



CAM r THOMAS. G E< tRGIA 

back of a pack-mule or carried by a single man. 
Having th cooking-utensils, the next thing was 

I cook. There was a time when it was 
easy to find in an average troop or company of 

red soldiers as many men able and willing to 
could wish, but such is not always 
the case now. This may be due to the "ad- 
vancement" i >f the colored race, or to our col- 
ored troops being recruited more in the North 
and less in the South, proportionately, than they 
were ; or to the fact that of late years officers' 
servants have not been exempt from drill and 
other duties : <>r, finally, to the cause, whatever it 
may be. of the general scarcity of good cooks out- 
side of the arm>-. In the navy, men are enlisted 
as officers' servants; in the army, officers have to 
find servants as best they can. On the frontier 
it is often impossible, and. on account of the high 
scale of wages, commonly impracticable for offi- 
cers to secure servants other than soldiers. I 
have experienced the advantage there of having 
a Chinaman or other civilian for a servant. 
When the troop is ordered into the held, there 
is no question as to his remaining in the post to 
look after ami wait on my family. Hut, apart 
from that, I prefer, in garrison and in the field, 
civilians as servants. I interviewed 

of my men I r c him as a cook, bul 

had just had an experience as troop-COok, and 
did not want any more me time. 

B 



NTIAGO CAM PA IGN 

in the troop who could 

I would be able to find one 

my Second Lieu- 

urse I proposed to 

r him the usual compensation for cooking 

• • _n dollars a month. 

time I heard that our regiment 

i Tampa, and, besides, that 

ipplies in camp for 

circumstances, Ken- 

t off the si irting of 

tablished in our new 

ntinued to mess 

• 

• I ittanooga. After 

wire cot. I 

• a canvas one, which folds up 

pack-mule, but there was none 

:n left. I bought two folding-chairs, 

I small 1 lass. Il med 

rnment did not furnish 

c thin p them for sale, it would 

a full I them, and 

them in thecamp. As a m< >s could 

' a table, and I could 

lc, 1 bou jht a seam- 

I and shaky, but 

lility the 

. laid off in feet 



CAM 1' THOMAS. GEORGIA 

There was some talk among our officers of form- 
ing a regimental mess, as cheaper and more 

ible than troop messes; but the scheme 
argued down, principally on the ground that a 
regimental mess would necessarily break up 
the troop messes, and that this would result in 
great inconvenience in case of troops being de- 
tached <>r the regiment split up. 

From no quartermaster in camp could I buy a 
campaign hat, or pair of gauntlets, or riding-leg- 

For these articles I sent to a firm in N 
:. Several weeks passed before I received 
them. In the mean time I wore a borrowed hat 
and gauntlets, and the abominable regulation 
riding-boot. There was no uniformity in what 
the officers wore on their feet. Some wore boots, 
s< ime leggings, and some shoes with boot-tops i cut 
ts) in lieu of leggings. The boots and 
leggings were of various kinds — some high, some 
low, some black, some tan. Some of the leggil 
were of canvas and some of leather. The 
riding-boot that I know of is the Thompson b 
It laces over the instep, and is therefore always 

put on or take off. I think it better for 
cavalry than any legging. Among the artich 
an officer's equipment which I had to provide 
myself with was a saddle-cloth. This is an <<\ 
namental covering for the blanket which g 
under the saddle. I m • 
it. and wish it wen aboli hi • !. It is an unm 



lMPAIGN 

to the con- 

a! ready greater 

on his shoulders 

nhi sure, indeed, to 

i I iring the cam- 

of our officers wore the 

tinguished from the 

by tl nee of buttons as 

• ind- 

• 'liar. The cam- 

I until after the war 

1: ha • a turn <: >wn instead i if a 

:' inside pockets, 

1 i reason why it 

. :e the old blouse in garrison. It 

ild have 

m to 'to war in. 

;s declared. It is a striking 

nth of field-exercises in 

n of war finds our 

ther suitabl 

. in any climate. 

I i .:.: into the army 

i I .;. in whole or in 

ibed by the 
I . il War. or in the 

made but I 
1 hall i • mpt 

that have been 
! in the 



(AM 1' THO M AS, GEORGJ A 

n will find the subject ti up to a 

recent date in a large book with colored illus- 
trations, published by the Quartermaster's Depart- 
ment. For the evolution of our drill regulations, 
I d.» not know of any official document to refer 
him to. It would seem that our general staff has 
had less time for thinking about tactics than for 
pondering on what Von Moltke called the " mil- 
linery of the military profession." I might with 
red tape and plenty of time have procured my 
saddle-cloth from the Ordnance Department, but 
I preferred to save both by dealing with a private 
firm, and I did. 

The daily papers, which were hawked through 
the camp early and often, were read with avidity 
by officers and men. One morning I was startled 
by a loud and prolonged cheering. Looking in 
the direction from which it came, I could see 
men out in the company streets, waving their 
hats, and newspaper boys running from company 
to company, and each organization after another 
taking up the demonstration, which passed down 
the line to our camp and on through the infantry 
camps beyond. It was the rejoicing over Dewey's 
great victory at Manila. I was already impressed 
by the fact that the navy was making a better 
showing in the war than the army. The navy 
had a general staff school, and had worked out 
plans of mobilization in advance. Tin- army had 

'I 



CA M PAIGN 

and 

d in camps ; 

trained to 1 he trout 

1 sent to the 

division 

or the Phil- 

giment here 

\'. : may have been 

The navy had tl I idvantage of 

led for the war. 

xiliary navy, there were no 

tr naval commanders. The 

. comparatively 

the dir operations was 

The government will 

• ly battle- 

• i the handling of militia or 

• it thinks nothing of in- 

: hundreds and thousand 

' : s in land warfare. 

verthearmy 

een that of 

rHcers. The 

mmissioned of- 

tined for their 

it th for apprenti< 

like that of warrant-of- 
th.u for naval 

s. The 



IP THOM/ I G I A 

>| training than the 

I ,r intioi 
• 
o! Tampa. 

of pi I ferny, 

the first, if I rightly, to be prom 

out ol H 

• 

Son. ' not 

;ly inclined to 
my proflioti out 

y a I 
in a ;iment. I felt that the col 

front, an 
:. • I • * '. I preferred a 
tain I " in Georgia or 

I ridaoranywh I felt, too, that during 

rt of the war, and thr< I the 

war, if i' .1 .ted, the 

it do or ice as much :' 
ilars; that th ibit- 

ually be at the front in advancing and at tin. 
in retreat 

1 that th 
• 
the theatre of active nty 

I ha-1 labored under the 
. ing in a t. I was i in a 

= 3 



I AM PA I GN 

; advantage from it, and 
[; ibsequent ex- 
hat I was borrowing 

:' a transfer from 
I ion. 
t the C a white regiment 

■ 'ae colored troops be 
their presence was 
>r humili I the others. Regard- 

of the people hereabouts with 
ry was current in the 
the men, , into a bar- 

refused a drink on 
As he started to go out, 
'.lowed him, remarking: " I don't 
v put you damned niggers in the 
:Tt fight." At that 
lier turned around and hit this 
tween th . laying him out 

I >:ie or two assistant barkeepers 

' 'heir chief, but the soldier now 

tive with his legs as he had 

. and w.ts out of the door 

Fore they could reach 

:ruits came to us at Camp 

thing out what 

ir backs. I procured furloughs 

ible them to go 

The Quarter- 



CAM r 1 HO MAS, GEORGIA 

master's I ' irtment could not supply the wants 
of the men in the companies, to say nothing of 

the recruits. 

The officers were puzzled and vexed at the 

dilution of the Regular regiments with recruits. 
Expecting to enter upon a campaign in a few 
days or weeks, they believed the recruits would 
prove a weakness rather than a strength to the 
army. If the campaign was not to commence 
until the fall, the}- could not see why the recruits 
should be sent to the regiments. They might have 
been better drilled in army po>ts, where there 
were ridingdialls, fencing outfits, targets, and tar- 
get-ranges, than they could at Camp Thomas, 
where there were none of these appointments. 
h regiment should have had a depot at an army 
post from which recruits should have been for- 
warded as fast as they were trained and equipped, 
and no faster— until the regiment was brought 
up to its legal strength. After that they should 
have been forwarded on requisition of the i 
imental commander to repair losses. In the 
German army such requisition is made when 
the loss amounts to ten per cent. 

In the course of the war our Volunteers experi- 
enced even greater embarrassments and discom- 
forts in their camps in the United States than 
did the Regulars. This may be attributed in the 
main to the disregard by the War Department of 
ral Miles's recommendation that n I 



1'IAGO CAM PA] GN 

OO men should be mobilized at 

..! . | :. V< lunt< i rs to re- 

imps until equipped and trained 

■ : Secretary of 

j.J 



Ill 

BY RAIL TO LAKELAND, I L< IRIDA 

When rumors commenced flying through the 
camp that certain regiments were ordered farther 
south, the Tenth Cavalry pricked up its ears to 
catch a report of its being one of them. It was 
so, in 'gratified. On the ioth of May it heard that 
it was going to New Orleans, and on the nth 
that it was going to Tampa. Most of the officers 
and men were highly elated, notwithstanding that 
many had to part with wives and sweethearts, 
who had followed them to the vicinity of the 
camp or resided there. The only exception that 
I heard of was a short, chubby, jet-black recruit 
of my troop, who remarked: "I don't like dis 
goin' to Florida. I'se fraid I'll get sunburnt." 

Clothing was issued to the troops on the 
nth. Mvery soldier has a money allowance f >r 
clothing which he can draw on pretty much as 
he pleases. What he saves by not drawing his 
full allowance is paid to him on his discharge. 
What he draws in excess of his allowanc 
charged against his pay. His clothing account 
is kept by his company commander, but in his 
-7 



N riAGO CAMPAIGN 

furnished by the gov- 
a memorandum 
thing account stands. It is the 
• >n rather than the rule for the Quarter- 
D irtment to fill a requisition for 
rhere is always something lacking. 
:. there were no shoes, no under- 
e of hats, 7f, which was 
of my men. The trousers 
•ling was half done. I 
; a pair of leggings for my- 
Idier who did not want them 
them to me. 
"entraining" the command was 
the evening of the 13th. I was 
to consist of thirteen 
car, and one passengcr- 
cars were for the horses of 
- 1 belonged to the third 
car for the forage for the 
forty-seven horses of the fust 
[uipments <<f my troop; the 
r 1 irty - five men and two 
my ti All the horses and about 

n <>f my troop were assigned to an- 
For trans] the rail- 

allowed three six-mule 
was packed after dark 
'. the other two on the following 
tnded on the [4th, at 



BY RAIL TO LAK EL A X D 

three o'clock. .After we had finished packing 
we had to clean up the ground for the next en- 
campment. Even the picket- posts had to be 
taken up and the ground left as if no camp had 
been there. 

It was IO.30 when the band struck up and 
we started on the march for the station of Ross- 
ville. We arrived there about noon. While 
awaiting the arrival of our wagons, the officers 
and men scurried about buying something to 
eat at booths, stands, wagons, etc. I got two 
ham sandwiches to last me until evening, when 
I expected to cat supper at another station. 
The officers were expected to subsist themselves 
in this way. For the men I had travel-rations 
— canned beef, canned beans, hard bread, and 
money to buy sweetened coffee with. 

The loading, especially of the horses, was at- 
tended with the confusion to be expected in the 
absence of a general staff-officer, or other official 
competent to control both the troops and the 
railroad. The trouble in moving troops by rail 
in our country arises chiefly from tin- ignorance 
"1 railroad men in military matters and of military 
men in railroad matters. Horses were put into 
with their heads where their tails ought to 
have been, but tin- railroad people did not care, 

the cars were loaded and the train moved out. 
I heard that they tried to get the regiment off 
with one car less than the contract called for. 



\ riAGO CAMPAIG N 

ler properly insisted 
on ii. lit should go empty. 

• .1 counting by Lieutenant Ken- 

mi G ns, and myself, I got 
five of my men seated in the coach 
• me, and saw to its provisioning with 
b :ing no ice in the water- 
re near the station, 
tor I payment. This 

my getting anything to eat 
: :n a civilian (.luring the war without 
l,. u r it. Ahead of me was a section 

I Lptain Reade, and in rear 
:r, undei Hunt. In addition 

I : .us. carrying the horses and 
■ the men of the three squadrons, there 

• r the band and headquarters, and 
for th making altogether five sec- 

• 

nt half-; ■ '.. amid handshak- 

of handkerchiefs, with cries of 

• yourself '" ring- 

and rolled oil on the 

'..i. Kennington and 1 • i 

i i packing, march- 

ince thr< k in the morning, 

ing b( >wled 

five to thirty 

lay parallel to that 

in h to Atlanta, and 



B Y R A I L TO L A K E I. A N D 

presented substantially the appearance of his 
theatre of operation. We expected to reach 
Tampa about 4.15 P.M. the following day. 

We reached Atlanta in the middle of the night, 
and spent about two hours and a half in watering 
and feeding the horses. The forage was taken 
out of the baggage-car, hoisted to the top of it, 
distributed along the tops to the several stock- 
cars, and fed to the animals through openings 
which we had some difficulty in finding and 
working. The water was fed by a hose from a 
hydrant into troughs running along both sides 
of each car on the inside. The horses were first 
watered in these troughs through the grating 
forming the sides of the cars. They were then 
fed grain in them. As some of the horses faced 
one way and some the other, they had dropped 
more or less dung in the troughs on each side 
of the cars. The troughs were designed to be 
emptied by turning them over, but the mechan- 
ism by which this was to be done would not 
work, and as a consequence the horses had to 
be watered with dung and water, which most "f 
them sniffed at ami would not drink. 

nington and I got our supper about two 
o'clock the following morning, and our breal. 
about ten o'clock. We had partaken of the coffee 
furnished the troop for breakfast. This portion 
of the ration was procured by telegraphing ahead 
forit. The parties who provided it, real; 
U 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

. monopoly of the business, tried 

md palmed off some 

i travelling by 

md cheaper if they made 

md feeding the 
M. to i -.30 P.M. We had 

lid not expect to reach Tampa 
.m. The country was growing 
There was not a 
: in the car, so we were all pretty tired, 
there were usually crowds of idle- 
to -tare at us. 
waved their hats. During 
man War of 1870-72. being 
the German troops, going by 
lied at the stations with 
pie. In my 
to Fl »rida 1 did not see 
. '. thrown at a soldier. 
i little discomfort due to the ir- 
I '■ ''■'■'■ iffee, my 

• . enjoyed the rapid 
•■ ; . For my part I 
in the s 1 onversal 

But I was cheered 

t handed me by a 

nam If >und con- 

1 '•• ' [uel of this incident I 

• ! tried in 



BY K.\ 1 L TO LA K 1. 1,.\ N D 

a letter to acknowledge my obligations and de> 
scribe the feelings which the graceful compliment 

had awakened in inc. 

This evening (May [5th) my section caught up 
with Captain Reade's at a station where both sec- 
tions remained long enough for Captain Reade 
and myself to take supper at a restaurant. We 
heard it rumored here that our destination had 
been changed, as it had been found at Tampa 
that there was no suitable camping-ground there 
for the Tenth Cavalry. We realized that wc 
were absolutely in the power of the railroad com- 
pany. All that we had to do, and it was more 
than I succeeded in doing, was to keep our men 
from being left on the road. I lost two or three 
of my men, who were picked up by the section 
in rear of mine. When we started again we un- 
derstood that we were going by a branch road to 
our new destination, but where this was, or when 
we were to reach it, we could not guess. I expect- 
ed to be enlightened on these points by telegraph, 
but I was not. When I woke up, at five o'clock 
the following morning, I found my section with- 
out an engine — side-tracked at a place which 
proved to be Lakeland, Florida. I sent my 
I utenant up to the station, about eight hundred 

v. mis off, to see if we Could get coffee there, 
and he found that we could. 1 got out of the 
car and walked up and down, thinking that >ome 
one at the station would bring me a telegram, or 
c 



SAN riAGO CAM PA [GN 

il I turn up to tell 

ith my men and horses — but noth- 

';. I found that Captain. 

! i >ns were at the 

. the predicament of mine. Cap- 

the senior officer present, I sug- 

things. We went 

e of the station-agent to see 

if we could find any information there as to what 

nt knew nothing 
t il • bile we were in his office he re- 
m for the commanding officer of 
y, which 

lirects me to inform you 

ide has been changed to 

I Tampa. Act accord- 

th of this communication we 

I our horses to 

md 1 . _d picket-ropes, 

at about in such 

I, to .ait for the brigade 

' r superior officer to 

re to camp. We 

about tliirtv feet long with a 

.. bit h a cavalryman 

it regularly, the picket- 

• ad secured 



BY KAIL TO LAKELAND 

under I I that the First Cavalry and Sixth 
Ohio Cavalry were brigaded with cur regiment. 
The First Cavalry arrived before the h 
quarters of the Tenth, having been sandwiched 

in between the parts of the Tenth. The brij 
commander arrived in the course of the afternoon 
and assigned the regiments to ind. 

Portions of our regiment which did not arrive 

until late could nut get to camp until the foil 
day i May 17th). 
Many of the men went to bed hungry in con- 
sequence of the wagons not having come up 
from the railroad to the camp. The work of 
getting thewagonsoS the truck-cars, and hitched 
up and in motion, was carried on until late at 
night. The teamsters had difficulty in handling 
the green mules which man}- of their teams were 
com: of. In consequence of this difficulty, 

and the darkness of the night, several wa. 
were abandoned on the way to the camp, which 
was not half a mile from the station. Tl 

ons were found in the morning, sunk in sand 
or ruts, or caught on stumps or in bushes close- 
to their destinations. 



IV 
I\ i . LAKELAND 

our men tried to buy a drink of soda- 

• vn, and was told : " We don't sell 

mned ni An altercation 

. I, in which th r drew his pistol and 

This incident 
i bad name, and occasioned 
I it which were utterly with- 
in- little the people 
.• the colored troops 
. the whole a ns than 

I they were just as good cus- 
mmenced to treat them ac- 
ind there was no further trouble on 
' 

ith did not seem to 

f< >r a n< 

lave, as a menial 

: iminal, and pauper, 

him as a soldier. 

• he had any fight in 

I the colored troops at 

doubtless 



in CA M P AT LA K i:i..\ N I) 

ned their rye. to the truth on this point, and 
increased the self-respect and stimulated the 

aspirations of tli 1 race, [f our Southern 

brethern would treat coli liers with decent 

civility, however much they might discriminate 

inst them, they would have little trouble 
with them. But these proud Caucasians, it 
seems, cannot find it in themselves to say: 
"We do not deal with colored people"; they 
have to say : " We don't sell anything to damned 
Many of our colored soldiers are born 
and bred in the North, and are quite unused to 
such language. It is hardly to be wondered at 
if, having the means to do so, they resent the in- 
sult by forever stopping the mouth from which 
it issues. The officers o( the colored regiments 
arc not surprised at the way their men behaved 
in battle. They knew that the colored ti 
would do their duty. Had they not seen them, 
in Indian campaigns, march and fight, go hur 
and thirst} - , and as scouts and guides carry their 
lives in their hands across weird, silent wastes of 
curling grass and chaparral, through gloomy, 
sounding canons, and ov< r wild crags and moun- 
tain-tops, as if they did not know what fear \ 

I heard this morning (May [6th) that Samp- 

fl et had met Cervera's, that it destroyed 

seven of the enemy \ . md that our />:- 

: i and New York were blown up ; also that 

our diversion from the route ' I T : ; i u is due 



NTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

• • t that Idiers at Tampa. 

• . bar, had behaved in a 

»sure had conse- 

r upon the War 1 >e- 

■ i prevent more colored troops being 

a Like, called Wire Lake, 
• . : cumference. We were in a 

■..ere tall, and not \ 
•ul their branches very high and 
much shade, but it 
had not. The tree- rested the 
<>r harboring any miasma. 
ndy, which was unfavorable 
Tiie camp i if 
i a similar site on the 
.1 from the Tenth, 
ait. Ti. regiments of the 

lined th . Ltely encamped until 

; . ; it three weeks later. 

:nts was not mate- 
hat il had been at Chicka- 
'.. i mm ir drilling with three 

to g a.m.. and 

'!. The time was 

a hour and a half a day 

ip -drill. 

the ! tion of the drill 

headquarl 

it. I thought this a singular 



IN CAMP AT LAKELAND 

measure in our preparation for a campaign which 
might involve marching and fighting at all hours 

of the day and night through a tropical summer. 
far be it from me to criticise. I wish only 
to record that the philosophy, or rationale, of our 
training at this time was too deep for me. 

As to brigade instruction, there was none. The 
ments were not united for a single parade, 
review, drill, inspection, field - exercise, or any- 
thing else. During most, if not all, of our stay 
near Lakeland, the brigade commander had his 
headquarters in a hotel in town. His regiments 
were never formed in the same line of battle 
until they came under the fire of Spanish rifles. 
It is hardly necessary to add that there was no 
division exercise. The division commander vis- 
ited the camps once. He did not have the I 
ments united <»r mounted. His inspection of the 
Tenth Cavalry consisted in walking through the 
company streets dismounted, and interviewing 
the officers. This was the only inspection made 
of our regiment during the campaign, except by 
officers of the regiment. I do not remember see- 
ing an officer of the Inspector - General's C 
inspecting anything. 

We kept on receiving recruits, arms, clothing, 

. ami having them doled out to us in drib- 

: we were continually making out vouchers 

for inadequate supplies. I understood that the 

army as a whole fared the same way; thai 



LNTI AGO CAMPAIG X 

be recruited up and <\\p- 

. me regiment, going from 

tsof the same 

. I il brigade to the other brigades 

;. and then to the other divi- 

■ much uncertainty, it seems, 

iments would win in the scramble 

• recruits formed a new 
itional instructors had to be 
Lte instruction prescribed. If 
. my recruits in one batch, they 
ng and put into the 
would have necessitated a 
' is for a time. 
I have kept the instructors so long 
the small and changing force 
the method — if it may be so called — 
. I it would not have 
d and non-commissioned 
ny of the recruit- 
it I ime hour as the troop 
conducted bv non- 
. i the super- 
1 it permission 
lei to excuse my 
tl i drill in order that he 
rill. Th 

I m y of 
. ill-masters. 



I N CA M P A I LA K I. LA N D 

I observed them in my own troop and in other 
troops of the regiment. I could hardly watch a 
squad half a minute without faults which 

the instructor did not correct. I am of the 
opinion that recruits should be received in 1 
I). itches at long intervals, and that all officers 
available should assist in their instruction. Dur- 
ing the period of recruit -drill, the troop and 
squadron drills might be suspended alto-ether, 
or conducted by non-commissioned officers not 
needed for recruit-drill. Trained soldiers can do 
without officers better than recruits. 

The Sixth < >hio Cavalry, if there was such a 
ment, did not come to Lakeland. We were 
joined, however, by the Seventy-first New York 
and the Second Massachusetts. The men looked, 
and doubtless were, younger than the Regulars. 
They were of lighter weight, and comparatively 
looking. They took hold of their drill with 
a will, and I believe attained a high degree of 
proficiency in it, but they did not seem to I.- 
or learn much about laying out and taking I 
of a camp. When I rode through their camps 

I was struck by the closeness <,f the tents to one 

another, the company streets seemed narrow, and 

the officers' tents not far enough from the men's. 

very direction I saw old new tin can-. 

•off clothing, and other rubbish. It is hardly 

an exaggeration to say that there was more dirt 

in one of their company streets than in ourwl 

41 



SAN riAGO CAM PAIGN 

1 tand that the commanding officers 

were allowed to choose the 

If that was the case, they 

• have fixed their 

e to the camps of the 

ild have served as object- 

• ■ 

: the chaste sensibilities of the 

no bathing in Wire Lake was 

._•■. The hour for bathing 

ind afterwards from 

[ i I to an ice factory in town, 

: tepid water under 

•.-.and a drink of ice- 

I learned how to make myself 

5 iiithern climate. 

':. I suffered occasionally 

in the head. I thought at 

• 1 : I have had a touch of sun- 

i hole about half an inch 

..f my hat, I had no further 

ic kind. I recommended my remedy 

ed that most of the men 

a few weeks later, I felt the 

in. I appreciated 
of my nun had improved on 

only three sides ot the 
with whi< 'it. 1 

ly a linen shirt 



I \ CAM P AT LAKELAND 

under my blouse. The latter was "f light India 
;e, but I made it lighter by cutting out the 
lining. I learned, too, the advantage, in point 
coolness, of sleeping without a pillow. 

The press censorship was so strict that we re- 
ceived very little news. As at Camp Thomas, 
our chief topic of conversation was the prospect 
of a move. Next to that came perhaps the lat- 
est promotions. 

To make ourselves as independent as pc 
of the town, we established a canteen, at which 
lemonad . -water, and novelties were kept 

for sale. At fust it was decided not to keep 
beer, but this decision was afterwards reversed, 
and the consequences were generally satisfactory. 



V 

•. •*: •. ' • ', \\: I EMBARKATION 

I read in my newspaper 

•it nine thousand) was to 

at Lakeland under the com- 

VVheeler. On the evening of 

• Smith (killed, a month later, 

I with twenty-five men of my 

d number of his own to 

. and bring hack a batch of about 

hundred and fifty horses. We received 

of recruits the day before. 

was reported to have gone to 

I like .1 move to Cuba, but 

' • coming to L ikeland did 

to f >rm any idea of what we 

The sk (L and 

I, and I was asked by the 

whether I wished to take 

I had nominally belonged, or 

i I actu illy commanded. 

I troop D. Within a dav or two 

•Id itself in 
lit its horses. I assumed 



TA M PA l: AY A.\ 1) EM BAR K AT ION 

that it was to ;^o soon ti> Cuba. On the 2d of 
June 1 squadron received similar or- 

ders. This squadron, which had numbered hut 
three troops, was increased by the addition of my 
troop (D). The band and headquarters were af- 
terwards addeil to this force, which thus became 
the main body of the regiment, or regiment 
proper. The other four troops formed a squad- 
ron, to remain behind with the horses and extra 
baggage. I prepared my troop in accordance 

with the following detailed instructions: 

MEMORANDUM 

Will at once prepare to take the field and stand 
march when ordered. Squadron will be dis- 
mounted and composed of trained men only, the horses 
being turned over to the remaining squadron. Will be 
equipped with five hundred rounds of carbine ammuni- 
tion per man. Revolvers and sabres will not be taken, 
except one revolver by sergeants. 

Requisitions for haversacks will be submitted by each 
troop at once. 

Respectfully, 

, Major Tenth Cavalry, 

Commanding Second Squadron. 
fun i 

In the course of the next few days oui 
dies and everything else that was to be left 

hind were packed up. We still had the horses 

to groom and feed but not to ride. It was 

rather a damper on our ardor for active service 

45 



SA NT tAGO CAM PA I GN 

part with our horses. Many of 
and experimenting for 
to learn how we should 
and han as cav- 

an enemy. We were now 
a real enemy, and by a stroke of 
>cn w rtcd into infantry. We heard 

'. Miles had stated that our horses 
nt after us. But we doubted whether 
ich a statement, 
■ i make it good. We did not ex- 
. in (.luring the campaign, 
1 had just finished paying, by 
.in indifferent animal, which 
i, to carry me along 
the Cuba and into the ranks 

ilry. Th : n w, dismounted, 
t I beloi d had one drill be- 
I, and none afterwards. Our 
generally too rigid. There is 
to the intervals be- 
ll to their p 
r their I md rests for 

n of distances, the 
• . n, etc. About half of 
p had never had any t.i 

A simi- 

btained thn • the pro- 

ps which was to 

! t if the military problem 



TAMPA BAY AND EMBARKATION 

were a simple one — a direct front attack 

ive defence— the regiment would render a 
account of itself; but if the problem in- 
volved considerable manoeuvring, or splitting up 
and co-operation in a number of columns, or re- 
forming after a repulse, it would make a | 
showing. From lack of field - exercises, it was 
not used to facing the unexpected, which is the 
usual thing in war. But the men were in ; 
health and spirits, their physique excellent, and 
they had unbounded confidence in their officers. 
On the 6th we were ordered to put our baggage 
(rations, tentage, etc.) on the cars, and told that 
the men would be entrained in the evening, 
and would spend the night in the cars. About 
7.30 P.M. I was informed that the train would 
be ready for the men until the following 
morning, and that the troops would bivouac in 
their old camp. By this time all my property 
had been loaded. My men slept in their shelter- 
tents. Kennington and I slept in officers' tents 
which were to remain up or had not yet been 
taken down. We had no means of cooking br 

I had not even kept a towel out for myself. 
ille was I he 7th at about 

half ; \.\l., and th .idy to 

on the train at half-past four. By mistake 

the Colonel had reveille sounded at half -past 
two. My men breakfasted with »>ne of the tn 

that remained behind. After breakfast they 



i NT I AGO CAM PAIG N 

" until time 

»int when they 

for tl I time by Wire Lake. 

in suc- 

ht in columns of twos, and 

the remaining troops to the left, 

the border of the lake, 

ng outskirts of Lakeland 

• ■ . the first time that I saw 

blankets and shelter- 
| like infantrymen. 
[ue in it to my cav- 
tation we remained 
.-.. in the course of 
thai the train was not ready 
we had halted, the Colonel, 
I and myself did to t 
n, inquired of me where they were, 
that they were in camp, ordered 
for them. A sabre is an 
irry dismounted. According 
m h' :n cavalry dismounts 
like the men, leave 
iddles, unless other- 
en otherwise direct- 
mounted cavalry- 

nent was marched 

the main square of the town, 

lined in the broil- 



TAMPA DAY AND EMBARKATION 

>un until afternoon 
hours. The men were allowed, a few at a time, 
to go out to a store or restaurant near by. 
Fortunately they had been paid not long bei 
and many of them had money. There was no 
lunch to give them except hard bread. I 
going to have some issued, but the First S 
geant told me that the men would not eat it. 
They would prefer waiting, he said, until we got 
to Tampa, and could have a square meal. S ! 
made the mi-take of not giving them what f 
I had. I left all the hard bread in the baggage- 
car. We should have had canned meat. Why 
wc did not I do not know, unless it was that our 
brigade commissary was a Volunteer officer fresh 
from civil life. However that may have been, 
this officer proved himself alive to hi, re 
sibilities, and fitted himself to fulfil their highest 
requirements. lie was wounded at San Juan 
while attending to the distribution of ratio:: 
the firing-line. 

Most of the I rs took lunch at a hotel. 

1< v< n o'clock we were about to get On the 
train, when the Colonel, having inspected the 

and dfc I that thi no ice i- I 

wat i rs, dcl.r. ration until the 

rail: npany had repaired that lit; 

sion. We boarded the train between u. 

.ml star' We reached Tampa 

it 3 P.M., and di on the pier, 

u 



SAN II AGO CAM PAIGN 

insports about a mile long. 

few hundred yards through a 

ddiers brought us to the 

and we proceeded to embark. 

madron, to which I 

d, led me in pitchy darkness through a 

• I bunks, four in a tier, between 

n the after-part of the vessel. After I 

il 1 | »ok my troop and led 

this black hole. To make 

it the men were accommodated, I had each 

The bunks were made of 

and < I of planks to lie 

i six inches high all around. 

:upant kept all his effects, in- 

I ammunition. There w< re 

After the men were as- 

1 wanted to give my men 

und that there was nothing 

them. Th< lining our 

. n h hind, and the inter- 

1 went to 

the pier t<> make arrangements 

■ tl . and was told by the 

■ it that to have < men eat 

n her business. Af- 

inquiries, and ineffectu- 

within r< a< h 1 retui ned 

t old Fi 

t I felt for tl t o >uld not i\o 



T \ M PA BAY AND KM BA R K AT [ON 

anything to relieve their hunger. Excepting the 
coffee ami hard bread they ate about three o'clock 
in the morning, they had not received anyth 
to eat from the Government since the night be- 
fore. To my surprise, Sergeant Givens informed 
me that the men had gotten something to eat by 
buying it. and that he did not believe any of 
them could be very hungry. I suppose they 
dit fruit, cakes, pies, and sandwiches from 
peddlers along the pier. 

Loud and deep was the profanity with which 
the sound of reveille was greeted the following 
morning at four o'clock. Without breakfast, the 
men were put to work taking the b off 

the cars and loading it on the transport. I was 
told by my squadron commander to put my I 

on where my men went on. and pile it 

where they were quartered. When I had gotten 

it half of itaboardand deposited as directed, 

1 was told by the regimental Quartermaster that 

all the b should be put in the hold in the 

nil part <>f the vessel. In view of these con- 
flicting instructions,! went !■» the regimental 
commander and asked him whose instructions I 

■■.-. the Major's i ir the ' Juartermast 
and was told to follow the Quartermaster's. I 
had accordingly to get my men to take off the 
part of the b which they had put aboard, 

and carry all our baggage forward and pla 

in the hold. The Firsl id head. 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

ters, which had followed us from Lakeland, went 
aboard, men and baggage, about the same time 
as we did. The confusion which characterized 
the work of putting the stores and baggage 
of the sixteen troops, two bands, and brigade 
headquarters aboard and into the hold, I shall 
not attempt to describe. No one seemed to be 
in charge. The troop commanders asked any 
and everybody to tell them where to put their 
things. I was asked by staff-officers and others, 
among whom was Major -General Miles, com- 
manding the army, if I knew when the loading 
of our transport would be completed. I an- 
swered that, according to the best of my judg- 
ment, it would be in about two hours, and ob- 
served that my answer did not seem to please 
the General. There was no partition of the space 
in the hold. Each organization put its sacks 
of bacon, beans, rice, sugar, tent- pins, its rolls 
of tents, bundles of picks, shovels, axes, etc., all 
together in as orderly a heap as possible, imme- 
diately adjoining that of another organization. 
The property of some of the organizations was 
covered by that of others. I saw sacks of flour 
and other packages burst open on the bottom of 
the hold and on the top of the heap, and heard 
the trickling of rice, beans, and coffee from bro- 
ken packages into and through the heap. After 
I had gotten the property of my troop stowed 
away, I reported the fact to my regimental com- 
52 



TAMPA BAY AND EMBARKATION 

mander, and was told that I should not eat my 
breakfast until all the property of the regiment 
was aboard. There was no breakfast -call. I 
gave my men breakfast as soon as it could be 
gotten ready, which was at half-past six, about 
thirty-six hours after the last square meal fur- 
nished them by the Government. This morning, 
our travel-rations (coffee, hard bread, sugar, salt, 
canned beef, canned beans, and canned toma- 
toes) were issued to us. These were to be kept 
between decks where the men slept and ate. But 
in the excitement of getting things aboard, a ma- 
terial portion of my canned beef was spirited 
away ; possibly it was mixed up by mistake with 
the supplies of some other troop — and consumed 
before it was noticed — possibly it went with my 
tentage into the hold.* While our transport was 

* It would be interesting in this connection to know 
what answer, if any, was made to the following commu- 
nication : 

In the Field, Tampa, Florida, June n, 1S9S. 

Sir, — Please ascertain whether the following has been at- 
tended to in connection with your fleet of transports : 

Have commanding officers required their transport officers to 
make a list of the contents of each ship, where stored, the bulk 
of such stores, and an estimate of how many wagon-loads there 
are in each vessel? Do the commanding officers of organiza- 
tions know exactly where their supplies are? Have arrange- 
ments been made in order that if so many rations of any kind, 
ammunition, hospital supplies, etc., should be required, that 
they would know at once where they can be found ? Have trans- 
ports been supplied with stern-anchors to hold them in place and 
53 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

still tied up at the wharf, we were informed by 
a staff-officer on shore that Roosevelt's Rough 
Riders were brigaded with our regiment and the 
First Cavalry. Most of us had never seen the 
distinguished Volunteer regiment, to and with 
which we were henceforth to be organically re- 
lated and more or less closely associated. A 
number of its officers and men, in their fresh and 
comfortable-looking khaki uniforms, were point- 
ed out to me, and I wondered, as I looked at 
them, whether my men were really going to 
march and fight in the tropics in the uniforms 
which they had brought with them from Mon- 
tana, and in which they had been sweltering in 
Georgia and Florida. 

afford a lee for the landing of troops in case of necessity when 
sea is somewhat rough ? What kind of small boats are supplied 
to each ship for the landing of the troops of that ship ? Has a 
list been made of them and the total number of men they can 
safely land at one time ? Have stores been put upon transports 
with a view that each organization's should be complete ? 

The great importance of these details cannot be overesti- 
mated. In landing, stores intended for one command are liable 
to be sent to another, and the necessity of having stores that 
may be needed accessible at once is manifest. 

I would suggest that thorough attention be required to every 
detail in order to insure perfect order in the disembarking of 
your command. Respectfully yours, 

Miles, Major-General Commanding. 

General William R. Shafter, 

Port Tampa, Florida. 
54 



VI 
ON TRANSPORT IN TAMPA BAY 

This morning, amid cheering and waving of 
handkerchiefs, we glided away from the wharf, 
past other transports in the process of loading, 
and, proceeding slowly a mile out in the bay, 
joined the transports that were riding at anchor 
with their passengers and cargoes aboard. A 
few gunboats seemed to stand guard over them. 
This afternoon many of our officers and men 
witnessed an occurrence which tended to shake 
their confidence in the sea-captains. A large 
transport was steaming slowly towards the wharf, 
heading for a point where a smaller, empty trans- 
port was moored. As the larger vessel ap- 
proached the wharf it dropped anchor. The 
captain intended, I thought, to swing around 
towards the wharf, pivoting on his anchor. How- 
ever that may have been, his vessel went drag- 
ging its anchor right on towards the wharf, and 
crashed into the smaller vessel square amidships. 
Men on the smaller vessel ran to the rail and 
looked over it at the other, which slowly extri- 
cated itself and withdrew, disclosing the huge 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

crash it had made. I looked to see the smaller 
vessel settle and go down or keel over, but hap- 
pily it did not. The wound in her- side did not 
extend to the water. 

Most of the transports were passenger-vessels. 
They were commanded by their regular captains, 
all civilians. We had on the Lcona a cadet in the 
first class at the Naval Academy, but his duty 
consisted chiefly in signalling, and in receiving 
and transmitting orders from the naval officers in 
charge of the fleet. The troops on board num- 
bered about one thousand officers and men.* 
This afternoon one of the gunboats fired a few 
shots for practice. Each shot was greeted with 
cheers by the cavalry on the Lcona. Our men 
rushed up the rigging or to the rail at the first 
indication of an interesting occurrence, and 
cheered at the slightest provocation, like a lot 
of small boys at a ball game. We expected to 
run down to the lower bay in the evening and 
go to sea in the morning ; but before evening 
came, our instructions to go down the bay were 
revoked. There were various rumors as to the 
cause of the suspension of our operations. One 
was that a new Spanish fleet had turned up, 

* The strength of the expedition is given by General 
Shafter, in his report, as 815 officers and 16,072 enlisted 
men. Lieutenant- Colonel Miley, General Shafter's 
chief of staff, gives it as 819 officers and 15,058 enlisted 
men. [In Cuba with Shaffer, p. 44.] 
56 



ON TRANSPORT IN TAMPA BAY 

another that peace proposals had been made, 
another that some of our transports were to un- 
load for practice. None of our troops had prac- 
tised the operation of landing from transports, 
and I thought it would be a good thing for us to 
do so, and to follow it up with a march of a few 
days' duration into the interior, bringing up our 
artillery (light and heavy), our medical stores, 
ambulances, etc., and deploying for the attack of 
a fortified place. We did not move from our 
anchorage until the following day, when with the 
other transports we went back to the wharf and 
tied up, while the gunboats took position farther 
down the bay. The men were sent ashore and 
taken on a march of about two miles for exer- 
cise. On the ioth we cast off, and again an- 
chored out in the bay not far from the wharf, 
where we lay until the 13th."" On that day we 
moved a few miles down the bay and cast anchor 
again. It was the 14th, a week after our em- 
barkation, when we finally started for the lower 
bay. During this long, tedious period of waiting 
we were governed in the main by the provisions 

* Lieutenant-Colonel Miley, General Shatter's chief of 
staff, says in his book on the campaign (In Cuba with 
Shafter, p. 36) : " Orders were given to the various com- 
manding officers while lying in the channel to practise 
their men in disembarking and embarking." I saw no 
signs of any such orders being carried out by any com- 
manding officer. 

57 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

of the following order, published the day after 
our embarkation : 

Headquarters Second Cavalry Brigade, 
On Board U. S. Transport " Leona," 

June 8, 1898. 
The following instructions will be strictly complied 
with in this brigade during movements by water: 

1. The top of the pilot-house and the starboard side of 
the upper deck of the ship aft of the pilot-house is re- 
served for officers. Enlisted men are given the freedom 
of the hurricane-deck and the port side of the upper 
deck to the after- deck. The guard will enforce this 
provision. 

2. Troops will form at their bunks for inspection, with- 
out arms, by troop commanders, at 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily. 
Every individual will then be clean, his hands, face, and 
feet washed, and his hair combed. Troop commanders 
will also frequently inspect arms and accoutrements. 
Arms will be placed so as to be secure from injury, and 
ammunition-belts from fire. 

3. Troop officers will enforce cleanliness about bunks, 
and will cause blankets to be taken daily on upper deck 
for airing, the same being replaced in bunks before sun- 
set. 

4. Smoking is prohibited between decks, nor will lights 
be permitted there except such ship-lanterns as the master 
of the transport may direct. 

5. At the marine fire-alarm — a long, continuous whistle 
— the trumpeters of the guard will sound " fire-call." All 
enlisted men will promptly assemble at attention at their 
bunks, and officers will join their troops and there await 

t orders. Staff-officers will immediately join their respec- 
tive commanders. At the alarm " to arms " the same 
procedure will be observed. 
58 



ON TRANSPORT IN TAMPA BAY 

6. During cooking-hours a troop officer of each troop 
will visit the galley and see that food is properly prepared. 

7. Lights will be extinguished at "taps," when every en- 
listed man not on duty will be in his berth. The officer 
of the guard will see that this is enforced. 

8. No officer will leave the ship without the permission 
of the Brigade Commander. 

9. The Brigade Surgeon will make recommendations 
respecting the provisions of par. 165, "Troops in Cam- 
paign,"* and such other matters as may be necessary for 
the health of the command. 

10. Regimental commanders will prescribe occasional 
exercises for their commands so as to preserve their good 
health and condition. 

By command, etc. 

Though the inspections at 7 A.M. and 5 P.M. 
were ordered to be made by troop commanders 
(paragraph 2), I observed that the 7 A.M. inspec- 
tion was usually made by a subaltern. These in- 
spections were often the merest form, as the place 
in which they were made was dark as pitch. In 
case of an alarm of fire, or " to arms," the men 
being at their bunks (paragraph 5), it would have 
been rather awkward to get a troop or a squad 
together or in hand. But neither the " fire-call " 
nor the alarm " to arms " was sounded during the 
voyage, even for practice. Paragraph 6 was in- 
operative, as there was no cooking done, and 
therefore no galley used. The nearest approach 
to cooking was the use of boiling water in mak- 

* Regulations for field-service. 
59 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

ing coffee, the water being drawn in buckets 
from an apparatus connected with the boilers. 
Paragraph 7 was, I believe, a dead letter. So far 
as I know, the men had no lights to extinguish, 
the only lights below deck being those of the 
ship, which the men were not allowed to handle. 
The officers were not expected to put their lights 
out. On account of the heat the men were per- 
mitted to sleep on deck. Paragraph 10 proved 
ineffectual for lack of instructions assigning to 
either regiment the time or place in which it was 
to exercise, so that it should not interfere with 
the other regiment. This omission was remedied 
by the following order superseding the paragraph 
in question : 

General Field Orders, No. n. 

Headquarters Second Cavalry Brigade, 
On Board S. S. " Leona," 
Tampa Bay, Florida, June 11, 1S98. 
******* 
While on shipboard, circumstances permitting, troops 
will be exercised daily on the saloon-deck in such of the 
setting-up exercises as can be practised. Regimental 
commanders will see that squadron commanders supervise 
the exercises of their squadrons. 

The saloon-deck will be used for this purpose in ac- 
cordance with the schedule given below. 

Regimental commanders may cause squadron com- 
manders to arrange for such rotation of troops of their 
squadrons as may seem advisable, and will cause troops 
to follow each other promptly, so that all time may be 
utilized. 

60 



ON TRANSPORT IN TAMPA BAY 



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6i 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

Three days after this order was published, one 
or two men fainted at the exercises, and there 
was no more regular exercise. The calls to duty 
were sounded as indicated in the following cir- 
cular : 

circular j Headquarters Second Brigade, 

No - 7 - ' On Board S. S. " Leona," 

Tampa Bay, Florida, June 12, 1898. 
The officer of the day will regulate the following in- 
structions: 

1. The trumpeter of the guard will sound, daily, first 
call for reveille at 4.45 A.M., when all trumpeters will 
assemble on deck. At 4.55 the march will be sounded, 
followed by reveille. No assembly. 

2. First call for retreat will be sounded by the trum- 
peter of the guard at an hour so as to allow fifteen 
minutes between first call and the time of the assembly 
of the trumpeters and band, which will be at sunset. No 
formation will take place. The band of the First Cavalry 
will be used for the ceremony on the days of even dates, 
beginning to-day. The band of the Tenth Cavalry will 
be used on the days of uneven dates. Retreat will be 
sounded by the trumpeter, followed at the last note of the 
retreat by the band, which will play " The Star Spangled 
Banner." All officers and enlisted men standing will 
remove their hats, and quiet will be observed. At the 
last note of "The Star Spangled Banner" three cheers 
will be given. 

3. First call for tattoo, 8.45 p.m. Tattoo by all the 
trumpeters at 9 p.m. 

By command, etc, 

I had never before known what it was to 
62 



ON TRANSPORT IN TAMPA PAY 

cheer by order. Throughout the voyage the 
three cheers prescribed in paragraph 2 were 
given with a will by officers and men. 

The men spent a good deal of their time in 
gambling. The portion of the deck allowed to 
them was thickly dotted, not to say covered, 
with card-parties. I had an outside state-room 
on the men's side of the ship, and could rarely get 
into it without stepping over a lay-out of poker, 
monte, crap, or some other game of chance. 
This state of things was abolished, and other 
matters of discipline regulated, by the following 
order: 

Circular,) HEADQUARTERS SECOND CAVALRY BRIGADE, 

No - 6 - ' On Board U. S. Transport "Leona," 

June 11, 1898. 

1. The attention of all officers of the brigade is called 
to the fact that owing to the restricted space aboard the 
ship and the close proximity of officers and men, there 
is no situation in which a stricter conformity to orders 
and regulations is more necessary for the welfare of the 
command than the present one. All officers should exer- 
cise the utmost vigilance that discipline is enforced and 
regularity and proper order maintained. 

It is the duty of all to suppress at once any conduct or 
action prejudicial to good order in any way. 

4. Gambling is forbidden in the brigade aboard the ship, 
and the officer of the day is responsible that none goes on. 

5. The use of fresh water is prohibited except for cook- 
ing and drinking purposes. The officer of the day will 
enforce this by stationing a sentinel at each fresh-water 
receptacle with proper orders. 

63 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

Troop commanders will caution their men against ap- 
pearing without orders in that part of the ship already 
designated for the use of officers, and will forbid them 
spitting on the deck and over the side of the ship from 
the upper deck. 



I was informed one morning by First Sergeant 
Givens that my troop was short of 193 pounds 
(nearly three days' rations) of canned beef.* 
The regimental commissary officer from whom 
I had my rations could find no evidence in his 
accounts of a shortage in his issues to me, and 
neither he nor the brigade commissary had any 
extra supplies. There seemed to be no reserve 
of anything in this campaign. As a general thing, 
if a man had a hole in his canteen he had to carry 
his drinking-water inside of him ; if he lost a bolt 
or screw out of his gun, he had to use his gun as 
a club, so far as I could see. Our expedition of 
about twenty thousand men, going about one 
thousand miles from home, was equipped on the 
principles of a scouting-party. I congratulated 
myself on being notified of my shortage before 
the expedition started, and decided to make it 
good by purchase from the company fund. There 
was a steamer announced to stop at every trans- 
port every two hours, to take passengers and 

* I have already referred to the loss of this beef as oc- 
curring during the loading of the transport. 
64 



ON TRANSPORT IN TAMPA BAY 

packages ashore, but there was no hour stated 
for its arrival. After about an hour's waiting, I 
got aboard of it, taking with me five of my men, 
among whom was Sergeant Stratton, my Quar- 
termaster-Sergeant. The boat had already 
stopped at a number of the transports, but going 
to the others, and from the last one to the shore, 
consumed two hours. I reached the shore about 
the time at which I had expected to be back 
on the transport. My first step was to call on 
the chief commissary officer of the expedition, 
who lived on a transport at the wharf. He told 
me that he had nothing to sell, that he only kept 
commissaries for issue, and, furthermore, that all 
the commissaries that he had were in a transport 
out in the harbor, giving me to understand that 
these would not be available, even for issue, un- 
til the expedition had landed in Cuba. He in- 
formed me that there were commissaries for sale 
at Tampa, about nine miles from Port Tampa 
by rail, and stated that trains were running be- 
tween the two places at short intervals. I found 
on inquiry that there would not be a train for an 
hour and a half, or until about 4.45. At that hour 
I started off with my five men, whose fares, fifty 
cents apiece, I paid myself. At Tampa I found 
the commissary officer, and bought the canned 
beef. I also bought from a grocer's cans of 
fruit for the troop, enough for several messes. 
When I went to get on the train the baggage- 
e 65 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

master would not take my packages either as 
baggage or as freight. I had, therefore, to send 
them as express matter. But I went along with 
them in the express -car, and reached Tampa 
about 8 P.M. My men carried the packages to 
the landing, and there we learned, to our relief, 
that the boat which was to have left at 8 P.M. 
had not yet arrived. We settled down hope- 
fully to wait for it. Nine and ten o'clock came, 
but no boat. In the mean time, a crowd of 
about one hundred officers and men had gathered 
at the landing to take passage to their trans- 
ports. I went with a few other officers to a 
transport moored near by to wait for the ferry. 
About eleven o'clock it was seen coming. We 
all stirred ourselves, gathered up our packages, 
and stood ready to go aboard. The passengers 
on the boat went ashore, and then, to our con- 
sternation, the Captain announced that he was 
not going to make another trip. The crowd 
started in a body to vent its feelings, but some 
of the men calling out, " Be quiet, let the offi- 
cers speak !" several officers expostulated in turn 
with the Captain, but with little effect, until an 
infantry officer from the transport on which I 
had been waiting got aboard of the ferry and 
spoke a few words in the Captain's ear. The 
landing-place was so cramped by two adjoining 
transports that the ferry could not get close 
enough to use a gang-plank. The stern of the 
C6 



ON TRANSPORT IN TAMPA BAY 

boat was brought in so that one could get aboard 
by climbing up a cluster of piles and stepping 
therefrom to the upper deck. For a moment I 
was afraid I would not get my packages aboard, 
but my men proved equal to the occasion, and 
we were soon gliding again in and out among the 
transports. As we approached each one in turn 
our watch called out : " Whot noomber air ye ?" 
The answer being, say, " Twenty-five," the ques- 
tion was promptly and loudly asked all over the 
boat : " Anybody for twenty-five ?" If there was 
not, we did not stop, but there usually was. I 
was immensely relieved when (about 12.15 A.M.) 
I climbed over the rail of the Lcona, and saw my 
detachment and our precious freight safely aboard 
of her. 

About 3.30 P.M. of the 12th, Troops C and F 
of the second squadron of the Tenth Cavalry 
were ordered to get ready to go to another trans- 
port, and were told that a boat would stop for 
them in a few minutes. They loaded themselves 
with their rolls, canteens, etc., and waited. Four 
o'clock came, and no boat. They went without 
supper, expecting the boat every minute. Seven 
and eight o'clock, and still no boat. About a 
quarter of nine they were informed that they 
would probably be called for in the morning. 
At three o'clock in the morning they were turned 
out and taken off. Such occurrences tended to 
shake our confidence in the officers who regu- 
67 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

lated our movements and might hold our lives 
in their hands. The departure of two troops 
gave me a berth in a state-room opening into the 
saloon, with a window on deck. It was on the 
officers' side of the ship, and consequently much 
quieter than my former one. 

I had not received a letter from home since 
leaving Lakeland. The post-offices between 
Tampa and Tampa Bay seemed to be swamped 
by the mail matter for and from the troops. In 
Germany, France, or Austria an army corps of 
thirty thousand men, halting for a night near the 
smallest hamlet, will have its mail distributed to 
it by the military postal corps. How much de- 
jection and heartsickness might have been pre- 
vented among our troops by such an organi- 
zation ! Many a poor fellow who was never to 
return to his home or country was disappointed 
day after day in his expectation of a last parting 
message from father, mother, sister, or brother, 
or other dear one. Men could have been de- 
tailed, it would seem, from the army, to assist 
the regular postal corps to any extent that might 
be necessary, to sort and distribute the sacks of 
mail that were lying in the post-offices only a 
stone's-throw from some of the camps and trans- 
ports. I understand that such a detail was act- 
ually made shortly before the expedition started 
—too late to accomplish its work. 

The pleasantest feature of our life in and about 



ON TRANSPORT IN TAMPA PAY 

Port Tampa was the meeting of friends who had 
long been parted. When ashore, the meetings 
took place on the plank-walk, at the hotels, or 
on transports at their moorings. Out in the 
harbor two transports rarely passed each other 
without an interchange of greetings. 

The transports, I understood, had steam up 
all the time, and cost the government on an 
average about one thousand dollars a day 
apiece. It seemed to me that they might oc- 
casionally run down the bay and back, or go 
around in a circle, to give us a little fresh air; 
but they did not. I am not finding fault. 
There may have been reasons why this could 
not, or should not, have been done ; but none 
occurred to me, and it is just possible that there 
was none. While wishing to make all due al- 
lowances for the difficulties which officers had to 
contend against in creating and moving our field- 
army, I am not one of those who in answer to ev- 
ery criticism exclaim : " Oh, but you don't know 
what so-and-so knows, and the considerations 
which led him to do or not to do this or that." 
I suppose that if the crew of the Lcona had been 
sent below with augurs to bore holes in the bot- 
tom of the ship, there would have been officers to 
say: " This is strange, but we do not know," etc. 



VII 

AT SEA 

The heat and spare diet had begun to tell on 
the men, when we finally started for the lower 
bay and had the benefit of a motion in the air 
due to the speed of about six miles an hour. 
The next week was spent in making our way at 
about this rate through the Bahama Channel and 
around the eastern end of Cuba to Santiago. Off 
the Florida Keys we were joined by the battle- 
ship Indiana and other war-vessels, which envel- 
oped us with a cordon of security. I understood 
that the transports were to travel in two columns 
about half a mile apart, with an interval of about 
four hundred yards between vessels. I could 
hardly recognize this formation in our order of 
cruising. Now and then a despatch-boat would 
turn back to prod up some transport that was lag- 
ging behind, or to recall one that was straying 
out of the column. Occasionally a torpedo-boat 
or light cruiser would dart out to right or left, at- 
tracted by a trail of smoke or speck of canvas in 
the offing, and, upon examining it, circle back 
into position. 

70 



AT SEA 

Among the crafts of the expedition were two 
large, low, flat -bottomed scows, heavily decked 
over, to be used, I understood, in landing stores 
and artillery, and in the construction of a float- 
ing dock. One of these " lighters " was towed 
by the Lcona. I noticed that the sole bond of 
connection between her and her tug was a single 
cable, and remarked to a brother officer that, if a 
storm should come up, that cable would snap and 
the lighter be lost. I was told in reply that the 
lashing was probably the work of some one who 
understood his business, superintended by an en- 
gineer officer or other expert in such matters. A 
day or two before we landed in Cuba my curios- 
ity was aroused by a thronging of officers and 
men to one side of our vessel. Looking out on 
the water, I saw this lighter, loose and free, about 
half a mile from us, drifting ever farther away, 
and a small boat with a couple of men in it pull- 
ing out from our vessel towards it. There was 
hardly a breeze or a swell, and there had not been 
a storm during the voyage. But I was not sur- 
prised to learn afterwards that the other lighter 
was lost. This one would have been, too, had it 
got loose at night instead of in broad daylight. 
I wondered, as I saw it caught up and secured 
again, whether the same expert, who was charged 
with transferring the lighters to Cuba, was to di- 
rect the use of them there in unloading the ves- 
sels and constructing a landing. 

7i 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

On the day of our final start for Cuba, June 
14th, I wrote home: "I understand that the 
Twentieth Infantry, probably the best regiment 
in the service, has been selected to take the ad- 
vance in landing. I have no idea how much re- 
sistance will be met with, but I hope it will not 
be such as to require the energetic and skilful 
handling of our whole force. Of the twenty- 
five regiments of infantry and cavalry, I doubt 
whether two of the same brigade have ever prac- 
tised attacking together, and whether half of them 
have ever practised attacking at all as regiments. 
The old blunders of the [Civil] War will be done 
over again with the same results. Lines of bat- 
tle will be thrown against intrenched positions 
before the latter are accurately located ; thin 
lines of skirmishers will find themselves suddenly 
overpowered with fire, and be repulsed before 
they can be supported ; attacks will be com- 
menced before arrangements arc perfected for 
following up such advantage as may be gained. 
No general, concerted attack will be possible 
with our troops. To think otherwise is a gross 
slander on the art of war." 

On the 17th, about three o'clock in the morning, 
I was waked up by the Major of my squadron, and 
notified that reveille would be sounded at day- 
light, if not before, and that my troop and the 
other troop of the squadron were to be formed 
with cartridge-belts and carbines along the star- 
72 



AT SEA 

board rail, and that two troops of the First Cav- 
alry were to be formed on the other rail — ready 
to fire at torpedo-boats. I had noticed before 
this that the ship was rolling uncommonly. I 
soon found that the ship had stopped and become 
separated from the fleet. It turned out that a 
signal to halt had been made by one of the gun- 
boats, or a signal made by one was interpreted as 
the signal to halt. At that time the Captain of 
the ship and his first officer had gone to bed, and 
the deck was under the charge of the mate. It 
was thought by some that he misunderstood the 
signal. At any rate, for three or four hours he 
circled around or stood stock-still looking for the 
fleet which he had allowed to pass out of his 
sight. The General did not know anything about 
it until the officer of the guard, a cavalry officer, 
woke him up and told him. I went on deck 
with my troop and remained with it at the rail 
until six, when I was relieved by another troop. 
Until four o'clock in the afternoon the deck was 
continually lined with men armed with carbines, 
the remainder of the command being confined 
between decks. I heard remarks made by officers 
to the effect that a commander who should cause 
a loaded transport to offer resistance to a torped. >- 
boat, or any other armed vessel, ought to be court- 
martialled. At three o'clock a vessel was sighted 
which proved to be the City of Washington, of our 
fleet, towing the water-boat. The remainder of 
73 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

the fleet came into view in the course of the after- 
noon. 

Gambling being prohibited, and no games pro- 
vided, or regular exercise required, the men found 
time hanging heavily on their hands. The chief 
events of the day were breakfast, dinner, and sup- 
per. For each meal the men formed in single file 
with their meat-ration cans, and got their wad of 
canned beef and handful of hard-tack. For dinner 
they had also canned beans or canned tomatoes as 
they came out of the can, uncooked and unwarmed, 
except by the air of the ship. At breakfast and sup- 
per they had coffee. Next to the coffee, what they 
liked best was the tomatoes. They grew very 
tired of the stringy, tasteless canned beef. Now 
and then an individual or organization would 
secure the use of the galley, and get a mess of 
something hot. It was suggested to me by one 
of my superior officers that I might give my troop 
a hot meal if I chose to " hustle " for it. I replied 
that if I were ordered to have a meal cooked, and 
told when I might have the galley, I would do so, 
but that I did not propose to do any " hustling." 
It moved me not only with pity, but with mortifi- 
cation, to see my men at the door of the officers' 
galley, begging or bargaining, as it seemed, for the 
remains of the officers' table. Between meals 
the principal occupations for the men were sleep- 
ing, or trying to sleep, and watching the other 
transports and the war-vessels. The bands did not 
74 



AT SEA 

devote much time to practising, and were handi- 
capped for a time by the disability of several 

members from sea-sickness. 15ut they played 
regularly, one in the morning and one in the even- 
ing. Men gathered about the band and applauded 
an occasional fine effort, or popular or patriotic 
air. " There'll be a hot time in the old town to- 
night " invariably evoked cheers and yells. Last 
piece of all came "The Star Spangled Banner," 
everybody standing, facing the stern, where the 
flag was slowly lowered. This imposing ceremony 
was followed by a bathos-like performance on a 
"tocsin of the soul." A lanky waiter in white 
apron popped out from under the bridge and 
tripped down to the main cabin tapping a gong 
to call the officers to dinner. The men who 
lined the edge of the hurricane -deck followed 
this individual with their eyes, and, having noth- 
ing else to applaud, applauded him. They did 
not mean to annoy their officers, but I, for one, 
felt a little uncomfortable as I thought of their 
cold stomachs, and the hot soup and meat and 
vegetables that I was going to put into mine. 

On the morning of the iSth, we were delayed 
several hours waiting for the vessels to get to- 
gether, as they had become widely scat! 
during the night. About I P.M. we came in 
sight of the coast of Cuba, and after that coui 
along due westward parallel to it, and about ten 
miles from it. As we rounded Cape Maysi, the 
75 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

eastern end of Cuba (June 19th), we kept for 
some time a due south course, which made some 
of us think that our destination was not San- 
tiago but Puerto Rico. On the 20th we brought 
up some five or ten miles off the southern coast 
of Cuba, and waited most of the day for some- 
thing, we did not know what. We expected 
every moment to get orders to land. That even- 
ing two of the war- vessels went close to the 
shore and fired three or four shots. Soon after- 
wards a despatch-boat came close alongside of us, 
and some one on it called out : " Take cruising 
order: course southwest," and off we went south- 
westward. This was about 5.50 P.M. I did not 
know what our long inaction meant, unless it was 
that General. Shafter had been trying to bring 
the Spanish commander to terms without a fight. 
No one seemed to know where we were going, 
but it was generally supposed that we were only 
placing ourselves out of reach of Spanish torpedo- 
boats. We stopped about eight o'clock. 

On the morning of the 21st I found that we 
had not moved during the night. It had rained, 
and the sky was overcast. We could just make 
out the hazy forms of the mountains bordering 
the southern coast of Cuba. It was frightfully 
close and hot between decks aft, where my men 
and. others slept (except those who slept on deck), 
and where they stood inspection twice a day, and 
got their meals. There was not a port, or bull's- 
76 



AT SKA 

eye, or anything of the kind open. No air 
reached that place except what came down the 
hatchway. The people of the ship pretended 
that it was dangerous to open the ports, but the 
General made them open one. 

From what I saw, and statements made by tin- 
first officer of the ship, I judge that the crew did 
not number one-third of the hands that it should 
have numbered. There was no army officer on 
board, so far as I could learn, who knew the 
terms of the contract made by the steamship 
company with the government. So, when we 
were told that there was no change of sheets or 
towels for the state-rooms, and that the ice and 
other supplies had given out or run short, we did 
not know whether we had any right to complain 
or not. The steward told me that the Quarter- 
master or other officer who attended to fitting 
out the Lcona told him that if he stocked his 
larder for a week, the supplies for the officers 
would be ample. We were a week on the v 
before we fairly started, and he never received 
any instructions to add to his stock. As we were 
on the vessel altogether two weeks, it is rather 
surprising that we fared as well as we did. I 
travel-rations, which were issued only to include 
the 19th, were made to last to include breakfast 
on the 2 1 st. There were plenty of rations in 
the hold, but no more travel-rations. What addi- 
tional rations wc issued would have to be 
77 



VIII 

DAIQUIRI 

ABOUT i P.M. oh the 21st the troop com- 
manders were informed that the troops would 
land at daylight on the 22d. At a quarter of six, 
about an hour after daylight, on the 22d, the 
Leona was about five miles from land. The origi- 
nal instructions were for the men to take with them 
in landing two days' rations and one hundred car- 
tridges per man, each troop to leave two men be- 
hind to look after the troop property on board. 
About seven o'clock we were ordered to take all 
our ammunition and leave three men behind. 
About eight o'clock we were again ordered to take 
only one hundred cartridges per man. It was or- 
dered that each troop should take three axes, three 
picks, and three shovels, to be carried by the 
men. These articles and the rations had to be 
gotten out of the hold. If we had been told 
when we went aboard what we would be re- 
quired to have when we went ashore, we might 
have kept these things out of the hold, or dis- 
posed them so that they could be easily gotten 
at. Having already told how the things were 
73 



DAIQUIRI 

put into the hold, it is hardly necessary to describe 
the efforts by which we got out our bacon, coffee, 
and hard bread, and picks, axes, and shovels. It 
was like a swarm of ants whose hill has been 
stirred up with a stick, except that in the case of 
the ants one cannot hear or understand what 
they are saying nor see or imagine the sweat and 
grime. 

The Lcona moved in towards the shore, and 
the General was notified which vessel we should 
follow in landing. The following is a copy of 
the order for disembarkation : 



General Orders, ) HEADQUARTERS FlFTH ARMY CORPS, 

No. 18. J „ _ „ _ 

On Board S. S." Seguranca, ai Si \. 
June 20, 1898. 

1. Under instructions to be communicated to the prop- 
er commanders, troops will disembark in the following 
order : 

First. The Second Division, Fifth Corps (Lawton's). 
The Gatling-gun detachment will accompany this divi- 
sion. 

Second. General Bates's brigade. This brigade will 
form as a reserve to the Second Division, Fifth Corps. 

Third. The dismounted cavalry division (Wheeler's). 

Fourth. The First Division, Fifth Corps (Kent's). 

Fifth. The [mounted] squadron of the Second Cavalry 
(Rafferty's). 

Sixth. If the enemy in force vigorously resist the land- 
ing, the light artillery, or part of it, will be 
by the battalion commander and brought to tl 
ance of the troops engaged. If no serious opposition be 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

offered, this artillery will be unloaded after the mounted 
squadron (Rafferty's). 

2. All troops will carry on the person the blanket-roll 
(with shelter-tent and poncho), three days' field-rations 
(with coffee, ground), canteens filled, and one hundred 
rounds of ammunition per man. Additional ammunition, 
already issued to the troops, tentage, baggage, and com- 
pany cooking utensils, will be left under charge of the 
regimental Quartermaster, with one non-commissioned 
officer and two privates from each company. 

3. All persons not immediately on duty with, and con- 
stituting a part of, the organizations mentioned in the 
foregoing paragraphs, will remain aboard ship until the 
landing be accomplished, and until notified they can land. 

4. The chief Quartermaster of the expedition will con- 
trol all small boats, and will distribute them to the best 
advantage to disembark the troops in the order indicated 
in paragraph I. 

5. The ordnance officer, Second Lieutenant Brooke, 
Fourth Infantry, will put on shore, at once, one hundred 
rounds of ammunition per man, and have it ready for 
distribution on the firing-line. 

6. The commanding General wishes to impress officers 
and men with the crushing effect a well-directed fire will 
have upon the Spanish troops. All officers concerned 
will rigidly enforce fire discipline, and will caution their 
men to fire only when they can see the enemy. 

By command of Major-General Shafter : 

E. J. McClernand, 
Assistant Adjutant-General. 
By night about six thousand troops were on shore. 
General Lawton was ordered to push down a strong force 
to seize and hold Siboney. [Report of Major-General 
Shafter.] 

80 



D A I Q (J I R I 

Wc halted among the other transports. The 
water between and beyond the transports 
dotted with small boats loaded with tro 
with their packs on and their carbines or rifles 
standing upright in front of them. Here and 
there were strings of small boats fastened to 
steam - launches with machine - guns in the 
bows. The swell of the sea, which scarcely- 
moved the heavy transports, made these little 
craft dance. / There seemed to be no order, or 
formation, either of the transports or of the 
small boats. They lay or moved about as if 
waiting for somebody to straighten them out 
and tell them what to do. Suddenly, bang, bang, 
bang went the guns of two or three war-vessels. 
With intense interest and delight the troops 
caught the flash and smoke of shot after shot, and 
the dust thrown up on the shore, now close to 
the water's edge in and about the little town of 
Daiquiri, now on the wooded sides of the hills 
behind it, now on a rocky point to the ; 
the town, as we looked at it, whence a block- 
house frowned down on the town and adjacent 
water. After this cannonade hail lasted about 
thirty minutes without being replied t>>. it a ised, 
and a few small boats moved in to the shore, and 
deposited the first party of troops. While cithers 
were closely following these, all eyes were 
sudden attracted to the rocky point overlooki 
Daiquiri, where the stars and stripes were being 
f Si 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

fl uil (T to the breeze. Immediately the air was 
filled with cheers, and whoops, and yells, the 
shrieking of whistles and crashing of brass bands. 
The landing of men went on the rest of the day. 
The mules for the wagons and pack-trains were 
mostly thrown overboard and left to swim ashore, 
and few, I understand, were lost. 

This afternoon (June 22d) our regiment went 
from the Lcona onto a large tug, which took us 
to the unfinished dock at which we landed. 
Many of the men had to jump from the vessel to 
the dock, and afterwards from plank to plank. 
Two men of our regiment had already been 
drowned here, and it is a wonder that no more 
were lost. The regiment remained standing in 
the road about half an hour, during which time, 
as I understood, the Adjutant hunted around for 
a place for it to camp in, there being no one 
present to direct him to one. It was almost 
dark when we reached it and disposed ourselves 
in a way to fit into it. 

I was looking at this time for a general order 
congratulating the troops on the success of the 
expedition thus far, commending them for their 
behavior on the transports, giving them some in- 
formation about the enemy, and perhaps a hint 
at the plan of operation, and appealing to their 
pride and ambition to answer the extraordinary 
demands about to be made upon them. As 
many of the officers and men had never been in 
82 



DAIQUIRI 

the presence of their commanding General, I 
thought there would be a review, or that the 
General would take occasion to ride with his staff 
along the front of the troops drawn up in line, 
so that he could see them, and they him. But 
there was no inspiring or congratulatory order ; 
and I, for one, never saw General Shaftcr during 
the campaign. 

We had, as directed, three days' rations in our 
haversacks. The men were in blue flannel shirts 
and blue cloth trousers and leggings, having left 
their blouses on board. Each man carried half 
a shelter- tent, one blanket, and a poncho or 
slicker. A poncho is a rubber blanket with a 
slit in the middle to put the head through so 
that it can be worn like a cape. 

The officers had, like the men, to carry their 
own baggage, except that the field and staff offi- 
cers, being mounted, threw the burden of it on 
their horses. I understood that at the end of 
three days, or about that time, we would have 
the tentage that we had left in the hold of the 
transport, and so I did not provide myself with 
a shelter-tent or blanket. All the covering I 
had with me was a light rubber overcoat. I had 
a haversack- containing three days' rations, a 

* To be strictly correct. I had a clothing-bag which I 
used as a haversack. Clothing-ba^s were issued in lieu 

of haversacks to our regiment, and, I believe, t<> the 
' 83 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

meat-ration can, and knife, fork, and spoon, also 
a canteen and a tin cup. 

Early the next morning (June 23d) our First 
Squadron went on towards Santiago to connect 
with the advance. My troop remained with the 
Second Squadron at Daiquiri. Bands of Cubans 
in ragged and dirty white linen, barefooted, and 
variously armed, marched past us, carrying Cuban 
and American flags. Our officers and men lined 
the road to see them and cheer them. The 
Cubans were evidently undisciplined. I thought 
from their appearance that they would prob- 
ably prove useful as guides and scouts, but 
that we would have to do practically all the 
fighting. It was understood that about one 
thousand of them were to meet us at Daiquiri. 
About seventy -five, I was told, were all that 
turned up.' x " 

No sinks were constructed in our camp. Our 
drinking and cooking water was taken from a 

other regiments. There is no material difference be- 
tween the two. 

* On the 23d the disembarkation was continued, and 
about six thousand more men landed. Early on this 
date General Lawton's advance reached Siboney, the 
Spanish garrison of about six hundred men retiring as 
he came up, and offering no opposition except a few 
scattering shots at long range. Some of the Cuban 
troops pursued the retreating Spaniards and skirmished 
with them. 



DAIQUIRI 

creek. I went down to it, and found men bath- 
ing and washing their clothes at intervals al 
the bank, and others filling their canteens not 
far from them. There was no guard or patrol 
to prevent the pollution of the water. I 
evening of the 23d we replenished our haver- 
sacks so as to be supplied for three days. The 
ration consisted, as long as I was in Cuba, of cof- 
fee, hard bread, canned beef or bacon, and si: 
The coffee was issued unground. When a man 
got his little pile he would take it off and pound 
it between two stones. It is hardly necessary to 
say that the grounds were coarse, entailing con- 
siderable loss in cooking. Orders were issued 
for us to boil all our drinking-water. We had 
nothing to boil anything in but our tin cups, 
which held about one-third of the contents of a 
canteen. There was not time to boil the water 
between breakfast and starting on the march, un- 
less we started pretty late; and when we did 
boil our water, we had warm water to drink the 
rest of the day. I tried at first to boil mine, and 
to have my men boil theirs, but I soon gave it 
up as impracticable. 

There were three kinds of fruit which grew in 
considerable quantity in this country — the man- 
go, the cocoanut, and the lime. It was gener- 
ally understood that the mango was for us an 
unwholesome fruit. The Cubans seemed to live 

on it, and many of our men could not be re- 
ap 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

strained from eating it. Although cautioned by 
their officers against it, they would bring it into 
camp by the hatful. Many got cramps and diar- 
rhoea from it. The cocoanut was also generally 
regarded as injurious, but eaten by many never- 
theless. I was told, however, by an expert, that 
the milk of the green cocoanut was perfectly 
wholesome. All our advisers agreed in rec- 
ommending the lime, ripe or green, and in 
any quantity. The juice of this fruit was the 
most palatable thing that passed my lips in 
Cuba. 

This evening (June 23d) we had our first taste 
of tropical rain. Kennington and I had retired 
for the night to an arbor which we had construct- 
ed to protect us against the sun. It had not 
rained long when drip, drip, the first drops came 
through our saturated roof. We got up, gath- 
ered our overcoats about us, and took seats on a 
cracker-box or our saddles — I do not remember 
which. The drippings from our hats and shoul- 
ders accumulated in pools in our laps and around 
our points of support. It has been truly said 
that nothing takes the spirit out of a soldier like 
wetting the seat of his breeches. When our 
wetting had quite reached this demoralizing 
stage, the rain stopped, and the stars came out, 
twinkling, it seemed, with enjoyment. We were 
glad to take a place at the fire which the men 
started up, and dry our clothes with them, and 
86 



DAIQUIRI 

listen to their chaff, until we got to the pari of 
our clothing which we habitually sit upon. At 
that point we had a fire made for the officers, 
and modestly retired to complete our drying 
dressing. 



IX 
LAS GUASIMAS 

On the morning of the 24th we took up our 
march towards Santiago. Officers and men were 
more or less debilitated by the long confinement 
aboard ship. They were unaccustomed to foot- 
marching, especially with packs on their backs. 
It was therefore surprising that we did not 
start until after eight o'clock. Our route was 
a rough, narrow road with many a steep ascent. 
We marched through the hottest part of the day. 
The dense undergrowth kept us, when we halted, 
from getting the shelter of the woods on either 
side of us. We would occasionally pass a regi- 
ment of infantry resting by the side of the road, 
and pay them back as well as we could for the 
chaffing they would subject us to on account of 
our beingafoot. Knapsacks, blankets, and shelter- 
tents were strewn along the road. Here and 
there we would pass a man lying down overcome 
by the heat, or pretending to be. In the latter 
part of our march we passed bands of Cuban in- 
surgents resting or in bivouac, and a number of 
Cuban individuals driving donkeys loaded with 
88 



LAS GUASIMAS 

cast-off U. S. blankets. I heard afterward i that, 
back near our starting-point, a party of our men 
lay in ambush for these fellows, and made them 
give up their plunder. 

About the middle of the afternoon a stream of 
litter-bearers passed us, taking wounded to the 
rear. Shortly afterwards we crossed a creek ami 
came upon the field of Las Guasimas." :< " The 

* This engagement was brought on, against the wishes 
and intentions of General Shafter, by General Wheeler, 
commanding the cavalry division, of which at this time 
little more than one brigade (Young's) was hnded. " The 
orders for June 24th contemplated General Lawton's 
division taking a strong defensive position a short dis- 
tance from Siboney, on the road to Santiago; Kent's 
division was to be held near Siboney, where he disem- 
barked ; Bates's brigade was to take position in support 
of Lawton, while Wheeler's division was to be somewhat 
to the rear on the road from Siboney to Daiquiri. It was 
intended to maintain this situation until the troops and 
transportation were disembarked and a reasonable quan- 
tity of necessary supplies landed." [Report of M . 
General Shafter.] I cannot doubt that General Shafter 
intended to proceed along the coast to the entrance of 
Santiago harbor, and open it for our fleet, but chai 
his line of march in consequence of General Who 
eccentric movement. It has been asserted that General 
Wheeler was in command of all the troops on shore, but 
he was not. He commanded only the troops of his 
division, and it was with these troops that he mai 
past Lawton and ordered the enemy to be att . 
at Las Guasimas. [Report of Major-General Wheeler, 
June 26, 1898.] 

89 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

ground was admirably adapted to the purpose 
for which the enemy had chosen it. On our right 
was the steep side of a mountain, on the top of 
which two or three block -houses could be made 
out at intervals of about half a mile. On our 
left a succession of rugged hills extended to the 
sea. The country was generally covered with 
dense wood and undergrowth. Immediately ad- 
joining the creek were a few acres of compara- 
tively level, open ground. A single ruin of a 
house stood on the right of the road about fifty 
yards from the creek, and a house on the same 
side of the road, about fifty yards beyond the ruin. 
Officers of the Tenth, who were in the engage- 
ment, gave me their accounts of it, and from what 
they said, and what I have read about it, I have 
formed a general idea of how it went. Our plan 
of attack, I understand, was determined the 
evening before at brigade headquarters, the pres- 
ence and position of the enemy having been re- 
ported there. From Siboney the troops advanced 
in two columns, the right column, consisting of a 
squadron of the First and one of the Tenth Cavalry 
took the road which we had taken and which led 
against the enemy's front; the left column, con- 
sisting of the Rough Riders, took a road leading 
against the enemy's right. In the right column 
the First Cavalry had the advance. When it was 
about a mile and a half from the creek the men 
were warned that they were approaching the 
90 



LAS GUASIMAS 

enemy, and cautioned to make as little n 
possible. As they crossed the creek, they came 
under vigorous volley-firing, which was kept up 
throughout the action. Our men deployed under 
a galling fire, and rapidly advanced, firing at will. 
The enemy was formed in two lines. His first 
line occupied the crest of a hill about two hun- 
dred feet high and about one thousand yards fn >m 
the creek. This line commanded the road by 
which our right column had marched. His sec- 
ond line was about eight hundred yards in rear 
of the first. It commanded both of the roads 
used by our troops. The two lines numbered 
about twenty-four hundred men. Our squadrons 
were broken up, so that the command of the or- 
ganizations was practically left to the eight troop 
commanders, four of the First Cavalry and four 
of the Tenth. About half an hour after the 
ball opened, the fire of the Rough Riders 
heard on the left. They came into action against 
the enemy's right, about six hundred yards 
the left and rear of a troop of the Tenth Cavalry, 
which was on the left of the First Cavalry. The 
other troops of the Tenth Cavalry were on I 
right of the First. The enemy retreated in time 
to prevent our taking any prisoners, but leaving 
a number of their dead where they fell. I h 
that the Rough Riders were in positi 
cut off a hundred or more of the enemy, but let 
them pass on their calling out " Cuban 
9' 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

a supporting line of the Rough Riders fired into the 
firing line, killing an officer and a number of men. 
These statements, I believe, have been contradict- 
ed. I heard, too, that while our men were fight- 
ing, our Cuban allies robbed them of everything 
that they had in their haversacks, which they took 
off and left behind when they went into action. 

All the artillery that we had on the field consist- 
ed of four Hotchkiss guns, manned by men of the 
Tenth Cavalry and commanded by Captain Watson 
of the Tenth Cavalry. Only three pieces were in 
action. They fired upon the enemy's first line from 
a position on the low, open ground near the ruin. 

We remained encamped on the field of Las 
Guasimas from June 24th to June 26th.! Orders 
were issued prohibiting bathing in the stream 
from which we got our drinking-water. I under- 
stand that there was water near by in which we 
were allowed to bathe, but I did not learn of it 
while I was there, and I do not believe that many 
of the officers or men did. 

The afternoon of the 25th, Watson and I, feel- 
ing our mouths watering for limes, scrambled 
through some stiff underbrush, climbed a tree, 
and filled our pockets with them. I had a num- 
ber of them in the bottom of my haversack for 
several days afterwards. 

No sinks were constructed in this camp until 
the evening of the 25th. As we left the next 
morning, they were not of much use. 
92 



X 

SE VILLA 

From Las Guasimas we marched over the high 
ground from which the Spaniards had been 
driven. Before commencing our descent, some 
of us, stepping a little to one side of the column, 
caught a glimpse of the town of Santiago, a 
scattering of light-colored houses encircled with 
green hills backed by mountains of a darker 
shade. A ridge on our left cut off the harbor 
and the sea from our view. We halted at a place 
called Sevilla, marked by a single ruined house 
and a couple of gate-posts. Again we stood about 
half an hour waiting for instructions. There 
seemed to be no one ahead to ascertain or deter- 
mine where we should halt and camp. Throughout 
the campaign the marching was unnecessarily 
fatiguing from its not being properly regulated. 
When the column came to a halt there \va 
telling whether it was to rest or t< > wait for tin- 
way to be cleared. The troops did not 1. 
whether they should lay off their packs or not. 
Sometimes, after standing with them on f<>i 
eral minutes, they would take them off, an 
93 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

the time they had done so the march would be 
resumed. So far as I know, there was no order 
issued regarding the rate of marching, frequency 
or duration of the halts, or intervals between or- 
ganizations, etc., and, as a general thing, no signal 
or other means was employed to communicate 
with the rear when the head of the column 
halted to rest or when it resumed the march. 

In our new camp we were about eight miles 
from Santiago and about six miles from its in- 
trenchments. We could not see the place from 
the camp, but I got a view of it from a spur of 
the mountain on our right, and from a point of a 
ridge about a mile to our front on the left, where 
we had pickets. We were camped on the right 
of the road. Other regiments, infantry and cav- 
alry, camped on both sides of the road in rear 
and in advance of us. Four batteries of field- 
artillery came up, and went into camp near us on 
the opposite side of the road. They were very 
much better off as to tentage, rations, and cook- 
ing-utensils than the infantry and cavalry. I 
understood at this time that we would have to 
wait for our siege artillery to come up before we 
could attack Santiago. I heard officers say that 
siege-guns could not be brought up by the road 
that we had travelled, and others say that they 
would engage to bring them up by it if they 
were allowed to do so. I heard also that the 
siege-guns could not be gotten off the transports 
94 



SEVILLA 

for want of lighters, and that they would be of 
no use if they were gotten off and brought up, 
because the breech-blocks, hindsights, or some 
other necessary parts, had been left In the United 
States. 

We had no outposts on our flanks, and what 
we had in our front were, from all that I could see 
or learn, a mere point, or advance-guard. But 
" all's well that ends well." The Spaniards might 
have annoyed our camps a good deal, but did 
not trouble us at all. There was some patrolling 
beyond our outposts, but no reconnaissance in 
force. I was ordered once to take my troop out 
for patrol duty to the point where the creek 
which we were camped on crossed the road, and 
wait there for the arrival of the brigade com- 
mander. This, I thought, was to be my first 
practical experience in patrolling. I had been in 
the army twenty-five years, but had never com- 
manded a patrol in the presence of an enemy — 
real, represented, or imagined. I told off the 
men who were to form the advance party, Hank- 
ing parties, and rear-guard, and started off in col- 
umn, intending to take the formation prescribed 
in books for a patrol when I should approach the 
outposts. Having passed one or two camps and 
proceeded some distance without seeing any 
troops to my right or left, Kcnnington inquired 
of me whether we had passed the outposts. I re- 
plied that I did not suppose I had, but did not 
95 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

know. He then suggested that I form as patrol, 
and I did so. On arriving at the creek, I found 
a sentinel or two posted on the near bank. I 
forded it and halted on the opposite bank to 
await the arrival of the brigade commander. I 
concealed my men in the dense underbrush on 
the sides of the road, in ambush against any hos- 
tile party that might come along, and cautioned 
them to take prisoners rather than to kill. When 
the brigade commander arrived he told me that 
the patrol would not be needed, as a party of 
Cubans had gone on down the road and would 
answer the purpose of the patrol. As I crossed 
the creek, going back, I heard an officer, who had 
evidently taken charge of trie guard at the ford, 
say that the sentinels did not know where the 
adjoining post was on their right or left, nor the 
ground in their front, nor what they were to do — 
in fact, did not know anything about their duties 
except that they were to remain where they were. 
Here and at other points where I came upon our 
pickets, I could not see anything that looked 
like supports. On my return to camp First Ser- 
geant Givens came up to me with a private of 
the troop, saluted, and reported that this man, 
being a member of a flanking party, had sat 
down and remained behind while the troop went 
on towards the creek. I shall never forget the 
expression of mingled contempt and indignation, 
tempered with respect for me, with which he 
96 



SEVILLA 

said, " Such a man isn't fit to be a soldier." It 
was one of our recruits. I detailed him for all 
the fatigue duty that should come up in the troop 
for six weeks. 

During our stay here, which lasted from the 
26th until the 30th of June, we had rain about 
every day, and heavy dew every night. My I 
were almost continually wet. On the 29th, Cap- 
tain Grierson of the Tenth gave me a shelter- 
tent and a blanket which he had to spare. Until 
then I had no protection, night or day, under me 
or over me, but my rubber overcoat, and the 
branches of trees. When it rained I got out in 
the open, stooped down so that the bottom 
of my overcoat would reach the ground, and 
"took it." Kcnnington and I luxuriated in the 
tent. 

The men were not allowed to bathe in the 
creek, which was the only water available. I 
the only bath that I had in Cuba by di| 
trough by the side of the creek, laying my rubber 
overcoat in it, and filling it from the creek with 
my tin cup. 

The road was almost continually alive with 
troops, wagons, mule-trains, couriers, and staff- 
officers, going or coming. I would often stroll 
down to it, and stand among a lot of soldiers 1 
ing on at the shifting mass of men, animals, and 
vehicles, occasionally recognizing an organizal 
or an individual, and greeting an acquaintance or 

G "7 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

being greeted by one whom I had not recognized. 
It was thus that I met my good friend Hersey, 
of the Twelfth Foot, who gave me something for 
my mess from the wagon-load of commissaries 
which he was hustling up from Siboney; and the 
noble, lovable young Michie, whom I had known 
from his childhood, and was never to see again, 
for he was to fall among the first on the deadly 
slope of San Juan Hill. I remember seeing the 
Second Massachusetts go by, and being impress- 
ed by the improvement of the men in appearance 
since I saw them at Lakeland. They were about 
as brown, and looked almost as hardy, as the 
Regulars. They went through mud and water, 
well closed up, at a good swinging gait. Our 
Volunteers in Cuba, as a class, did themselves 
credit. They had not the respect for shoulder- 
straps that is desirable — nor had the Regulars — 
but they were much better soldiers than Volun- 
teers of our Civil War with the same length of 
service. I am bound to say that they did better 
on the march and in action than I had expected 
them to. 

On the 27th I was informed by the regimental 
Adjutant that officers were no longer required to 
carry their sabres. I had carried mine, against 
my wishes, one thousand miles. There was no 
way for me to rid myself of it now except to 
throw it in the bushes, and pay for it when the 
campaign should be over ; for it was a govern- 
98 



SEVILLA 

ment sabre, belonging to the troop. I determined 
to keep on carrying it. 

During the night of the 27th I was awakened 
by the squadron commander and told to have 
my men dress, but remain in their tents, and ! 
themselves in readiness to turn out under arm . 
After I had done so, and had stood armed, with 
my Lieutenant, for some time, waiting for some- 
thing interesting and exciting, I was told to let 
all hands go to sleep again. It was reported the 
next morning that the guard of the Seventy-first 
New York, camped near us, had caused this in- 
terruption of our slumbers by firing into one of 
its own patrols. Such an occurrence is naturally 
incidental to campaigning with troops who learn 
the art of war in the presence of the enemy. 

Rations were issued very irregularly. We 
might on the same day receive two days' coffee, 
one day's bread, and three days' bacon. Some- 
times we received only the fraction of a day's 
allowance of one or more of the components of 
our short ration, such as half a day's sugar. It 
got so that the company commanders could no 
longer keep account of their rations, and diff< 
or disagreed among themselves as to what they 
had. Rations were issued pro rata as they came 
up from the rear. There were no scales to m 
ure anything with, and the brigade commissary 
had to get experienced non-commissioned 
cers to judge for him the weight of sides of ba- 
99 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

con, sacks of flour, etc. The men did not on an 
average get the full allowance even of coffee, 
bread, bacon, or canned beef, and what they 
got did not go as far as it ordinarily would, be- 
cause of the wastage due to individual cooking. 
It was impossible to cook for the troop collec- 
tively, as we had no kettles or other cooking-uten- 
sils, except the tin cups and mess-pans carried by 
the men individually. I have vague, indistinct 
recollections of complaints about the beef, but 
did not take the trouble to investigate them. 
I disliked the beef myself, and I had no reason 
to suppose that the men liked it any better than I 
did, and I was morally certain that no good would 
come from my complaining about it. I once 
had an experience as a complainant to the War 
Department, which I did not care to have repeat- 
ed. It was about the year 1893. I was in com- 
mand of Troop F, of the Tenth Cavalry. An 
appurtenance of the carbine (front sight cover) 
having proved itself to me too fragile for use in 
active service, I reported the fact to the Chief of 
Ordnance, and requested that a more durable one, 
which had been, and I thought was still, issued 
by the Ordnance Department, be furnished me 
for my troop. I was informed in reply that I was 
the first officer to make any complaint about the 
front sight cover, and that was all the satisfaction 
I got. In case I had complained about the beef, 
I should probably have been the first officer to 



SEVILLA 

do so. These particulars of my humble cx- 
perience may suggest a possible explanation 
of General Miles's inaction for a time in tin- 
matter of beef. Staff-officers, having horses or 
mules to ride, would make trips back to Siboney, 
and come up with their saddle-pockets crammed 
with good things, such as canned beans, tomatoes, 
and salt. We felt the want of salt very much. 
At last a limited supply of commissary stores came 
up for sale to officers. I laid in a stock of canned 
beans and tomatoes, rice, dried beans, bacon, 
sugar, salt, etc., which I could not have gotten 
into three haversacks, and we got orders to march 
that afternoon. I ate boiled rice and canned 
tomatoes until I was ready to burst, and, after I 
had packed my haversack full, gave what supplies 
I had left to my First Sergeant. 

General Shafter, who came up to the front the 
day before, assembled the division commanders 
at his headquarters this afternoon, and com- 
municated to them his plan of battle. General 
Wheeler, being ill with fever, was not present. 
The cavalry division was represented by General 
Sumner, the next in rank. It is a curious fact 
that while General Wheeler was thus excluded 
from the conference, General Shafter was hardly 
in better physical condition than General Wheeler. 
He was about as badly disabled by the ln.it as 
General Hooker was by the blow he received i i 
a pillar of the Chancellorsville House on the 3d 
101 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

of May, 1863, but, like Hooker, he continued, not- 
withstanding his disability, to direct or determine 
the operations of the army. This circumstance 
accounts, in a measure, for the remarkable fact 
that no order, circular, letter, or memorandum, 
not a scrap of paper, has yet come to light which 
shows, in writing, what the plan of battle was 
before the event. 



XI 

el rozo 

I HAD heard that there were stacks of mail at 
Siboney waiting to be sorted and sent to the 
front, and on the 29th expected that I would 
ceive my first mail in Cuba on the 30th. I was 
particularly interested in a registered letter from 
my wife, containing money. But on the 30th we 
took up our march again, and my mail never 
overtook me in Cuba. When my troop formed 
for the march from Sevilla, some of the men 
failed to put their full packs on, intending t.. 
leave certain articles, such as blankets, shelter- 
tents, etc., behind. I told them that they 01 
not to start without them, that we would prob- 
ably not make a long march, and it would 
time enough to throw such things away when 
they found that they could not carry them any 
farther. They then picked up the articles re- 
ferred to and secured them to their packs. 1 
not believe that they afterwards threw them 
away. My pack was larger and heavier than 
ever, but I prized its contents ami I I 
cheerfully. We marched as usual, alternately in 
i°3 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

single and double file, by the same single road, 
lined with dense wood and undergrowth. About 
the middle of the march we had to halt about 
half an hour while an infantry regiment filed 
across the road, cutting our column in two. In 
the mean time we sat around their abandoned 
camp-fires, smoking and chatting, and watching 
the passing columns and the war balloon, which 
we saw go up for the first time. Resuming the 
march, we soon commenced going up a hill to 
our left. We passed a building which I after- 
wards learned was known as El Pozo, and near 
which a battery of artillery (Grimes's) had gone 
into camp. Having wound our way a few hundred 
yards farther up the hill we halted near the 
summit. In our front, after forming line to the 
right, the ground sloped rapidly away into the 
basin in which lay Santiago and El Caney. But I 
did not realize at the time that we were within two 
or three miles of these places or their defences. 
It was after dark when we went into camp. We 
were not allowed to light fires. Most of the men 
turned in without eating. Kennington and I 
got out our canned commissaries, and made a 
good supper, for a cold one. 

For the first time in the campaign our regiment 
put out pickets. Lieutenant Smith had his 
troop out immediately in front of mine, which 
was, if necessary, to support his. In the morn- 
ing I relieved his troop with mine. He took me 
104 



EL POZO 

through the dense shrubbery by a labyrinth, 

which I could hardly have found out alone, 
each of his posts. I can sec his broad shoulders 
ami frank, manly face now as he halts in sight of 
one of his sentinels, and with a look directs my 
attention to him. When my last sentinel was 
posted he left me, and I never saw him again, 
and never can in this world ; for a few hours 
later a Spanish bullet ended his noble life, as he 
arrived with his men on the crest of San Juan 
Hill. Observing a ridge about one hundred 
yards from our position, and about parallel to it, 
and thinking that we might have to advance over 
it, I thought I would explore the intervening 
ground, and take a look at the ridge itself and 
the ground beyond it. I had hardly started tow- 
ards it with a patrol, headed by Sergeant Elliot, 
when I received an order to withdraw my ti 
and fall in with the squadron in marching order. 
About the time I got my troop in its pi. ice in 
the column we heard firing of infantry, and caught 
.sight of our lines closing in on El Caney. N 
and then a boom and a puff of smoke told of .i 
shot from our artillery. The officers ami men 
watched these operations standing with their 
packs on in the road waiting for the 
march. Some of them could make out what 
artillery was firing at, and occasionally see wl 
a shot struck, but I could not. Pretty soon t 
enemy commenced firing with artillery, and the 



i< i 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

report of his bursting shell sounded very dis- 
tinctly to us. I heard afterwards that some of 
them struck the building of El Pozo, on the roof 
of which a party of Cubans were watching the 
contest, and the result was a great scattering of 
Cubans. Some casualties too were caused in the 
artillery posted here. About this time a group of 
foreign attaches, driven away by the same fire 
from the position of El Pozo, came up to where 
we stood, and took position near a large tree in 
our front. I remember particularly the fine, stal- 
wart figure of Captain William Paget, the British 
Naval Attache, and his spy-glass. Shortly before 
we started to descend into the basin, I heard him 
say to his companions that he thought the posi- 
tion that they then had was about the best that 
they could take up to watch the operations from. 
After waiting about an hour for orders, our 
regiment took up the march. I thought as I 
passed El Pozo that the place looked a little dif- 
ferent from what it did the evening before, but I 
had no idea that it had been the target of the 
enemy's artillery. We wound our way down 
into the basin, and pushed on at a brisk pace in 
the direction of San Juan. I did not know where 
we were going nor what we were to do. I un- 
derstand that our Colonel did not know either. 
In the basin we found other troops moving in the 
same direction as we were and by the same road. 
When we halted for rest, other troops would pass 
1 06 



EL POZO 

us, and when they halted we would pass them. I 
remember seeing a Gatling battery, and. I believe, 

a batteiy of artillery, pass us. At times our regi- 
ment and another regiment, each in column of 
files or twos, would be marching abreast in the 
narrow road. At one time our regiment, a 
iment of infantry, and a train of pack -mules 
were all abreast, going in the same direction. 
They must have been in single file. There 
seemed to be less management or more mis- 
management of the marching columns to -day 
than on any previous day. I was joined on the 
march by the distinguished narrator of the opera- 
tions which I was helping to execute, Mr. Richard 
Harding Davis, who accompanied me some dis- 
tance. We remarked, as we passed the cluster 
of large tents of the Division Hospital, that it 
smelt like an apothecary shop. I little thought 
then that I would be lying in one of them that 
night. I remember my old friend Major Me- 
Clcrnand, General Shaftcr's Adjutant- General, 
passing me on his way from the direction of El 
Caney, and calling out, " Hullo, Bigelow ! they 
are doing well out there, but they need you." I 
hardly expected even then to take an active part 
in the fighting. 



XII 
UNDER FIRE 

Suddenly the column halted, and we were 
told to strip ourselves of everything but arms and 
ammunition, which we proceeded to do. I have 
seen it stated, in explanation of the suffering from 
hunger in front of Santiago, that the men threw 
away their haversacks when they went into ac- 
tion. I did not see any haversacks thrown away. 
The rolls, haversacks, and canteens of my men 
were taken off and laid on the ground by order 
of the squadron commander, who undoubtedly 
had the order from the regimental commander. 
I left two men of my troop with the packs to pre- 
vent their being plundered by our Cuban allies. 
I took this occasion to relieve myself of my sabre, 
running it about six inches deep into the soft 
ground, by the side of my pack, and leaving it 
sticking there. I have never seen it since, nor my 
pack either. 

About this time our balloon, which had been 

up about half an hour, commenced coming down 

near the right of our regiment. A figure could 

be seen in the basket, leaning over the side, evi- 

108 



UNDE R F I R E 

dently communicating with some one on terra 
firma. When it got about one hundred feet from 
the ground, a loud crashing and sputtering sound 
was heard, and the speed of its descent was no- 
ticeably accelerated. It came to the ground, and 
I did not see it go up again. I have heard tli.it 
it was riddled with shrapnel bullets. At the same- 
time that this occurred a whirring sound struck 
our ears, which we needed no experience to know 
was that of volleys of small-calibre rifles direi 
down the road. As the bullets tore through the 
dense foliage about us, we caught sight here and 
there of a piece of leaf floating gracefully down 
to the ground, indicating about where the centre 
of impact had passed. At the first volley, being 
entirely unprepared for it, I ducked my head in- 
voluntarily, and felt as if I must, or ought to, be 
hit. On realizing that I was not, I was pie . 
to observe that no one seemed to have noticed 
me. I am pretty sure that nobody did. Every 
one was doubtless absorbed just then in his own 
sensations and deportment. After that I did not 
attempt to dodge bullets, though I repeatedly 
sought shelter from them. About as we recei 
the first volley of infantry fire the troop ahead of 
mine started to the rear, but was soon checked. 
I understand that the impulse to retreat was im- 
parted to it by the Seventy-first X Y >rk. 

As one of the regiments with its pa 
imagine it was the Sixth Infantry— swui 
109 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

ily by us at double-time, I heard above its rhyth- 
mic thud, thud, thud, thud, one of the men call 
out, " Stand aside, and let the infantry go to the 
front," and I remember being nettled by the re- 
mark. I wondered why we were standing still 
and this regiment going by us to the front. Our 
loads being disposed of, we were closed up, and 
made to lie down in the road facing to the left. 
Bullets kept tearing through the grass, bushes, 
and branches about us. They seemed mostly to 
come from the direction of San Juan, enfilading 
the road in which we lay. I apprehended that 
the enemy had taken this road as his target, and 
had its direction about right, if he had not quite 
gotten our range. I looked around for a field- 
officer to apply to for permission to take my men 
to one side of the road, or at least face them in 
the direction from which the fire was principally 
coming. My squadron commander had gone 
towards our right, probably to confer with the 
regimental commander, and there was no field- 
officer in sight. I therefore, on my own respon- 
sibility, changed front with my troop to the right. 
In this position I was free from the troop lately 
on my right, in case it should again break to the 
rear. I was under the impression that we were 
much nearer the enemy than afterwards proved to 
be the case, and expected the regiment to deploy 
across the road at any minute. From my study- 
ing of tactics and the drill regulations, together 

I IO 



UND E R F I R E 

with my limited experience in field-exercis< I 
knew that in dismounted fighting, especially in 

a densely wooded country, the time comes when 
the direction of operations is necessarily left to 
company commanders, and I judged that this 
time had come, or could not be far off. I did 
not know but that the squadron commander was 
disabled, and I was determined that my men 
should not be decimated without doing some ex- 
ecution, through fear of responsibility or lack of 
initiative on my part. I felt that I would be 
erring on the right side if I slightly anticipated 
the proper time for independent action by com- 
pany commanders. After waiting a minute or 
two in my new position, the enemy's fire not 
abating, and no superior officer appearing, I 
faced my troop to the left, and pushed in sin- 
gle file into the wood far enough to clear the 
road by about ten or twenty yards with the rear 
of my column, when 1 came upon a line of in- 
fantry skirmishers, apparently a company with- 
out officers. The non-commissioned 
seemed at a loss which way to turn. I had my 
troop face to the right, or in the general direc- 
tion in which the road ran, the direction of San 
Juan, and prepared to advance. During all this 
time I could not see San Juan or any tin: 
farther than about twenty yards off. In antici- 
pation of the difficulty of penetrating the dens< 
undergrowth, I took immediate charge of the 

I ! I 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

platoon commanded by my First Sergeant, Will- 
iam H. Givens, leaving the other one to Sec- 
ond Lieutenant J. F. Kennington, Tenth Caval- 
ry, with instructions to keep this platoon in touch 
with mine. I then proceeded to advance in a 
direction parallel to the road which I had just 
left. I expected that by the time I arrived 
abreast of the head of my regiment I would find 
it deployed or deploying. 

As we pushed on under the enemy's " un- 
aimed " fire, now creeping and crawling through 
masses of vines and shrubbery, now wriggling 
through a wire fence, now rushing across open 
spots from one bush or copse to another, I called 
out to the men, " Move towards the sound of 
that firing!" pointing in the general direction 
of San Juan. "We'll soon get to open ground, 
where we'll see the enemy and have a chance to 
shoot back." The woods and thickets of Cuba 
have been described and spoken of as impene- 
trable. I have never seen the woods or thickets 
that I believed or found to be impenetrable 
for dismounted skirmishers. In my judgment, 
most of our manoeuvring or marching on the 
field of San Juan might have been done off 
the roads or through the woods. The enemy, 
of course, had the roads under concentrated fire, 
especially where they forked or crossed the 
streams. Woods are generally a greater advan- 
tage to the offensive than they are to the defen- 

I 12 



UND ER l'I RE 

sivc, because they favor secret or concealed 
manoeuvring. But if the woods arc so den 
that they cannot be penetrated, or the offensive 
has not the enterprise and energy to manoeuvre 
in them, they are an advantage to the defensive, 
as they confine the enemy to narrow defiles. 
Such was the case in the operations in which I 
was now participating. If the offensive docs not 
manoeuvre off the roads, and the defensive does, 
the latter seizes the initiative and secures the 
double advantage of having the enemy in long, 
thin columns, and of attacking him unawares. 
Such was the case at Chancellorsville ; and if 
there had been a Stonewall Jackson and Robert 
E. Lee at Santiago, the same would have been 
the case there. 

Bullets kept swishing past us, and now and 
then a shell burst overhead, but we could see noth- 
ing to fire at, and had been cautioned against 
firing, as troops of our own were in front <>f us. 
We waded a stream knee-deep, and, not far be- 
yond it, came upon a road running towards 
Juan, in which troops were lying facing in the 
direction of El Caney, but they were not the 
Tenth Cavalry. While we lay here resting 
geant Dyals, of my troop, came to me from 
the right. He reported that Lieutenant Ken- 
nington was in that direction with his plat* 
and asked, with the Lieutenant's complim i 
whether he should join me. The bullets were 
h 1 1 3 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

coming pretty fast and thick down the road, 
and I did not wish to subject his platoon to any 
unnecessary loss, so I answered in the negative. 
Sergeant Dyals was afterwards wounded so that 
he lost the sight of one eye. He has since been 
discharged for physical disability. 

Leaving this line behind us, we pushed on 
through a narrow belt of trees and bushes run- 
ning along the road, and came out in an open 
field of rank grass nearly waist -high, and the 
sound of firing seemed to grow louder on our 
left. So I faced my men to the left, and filed off 
in that direction. As a number of bullets dropped 
near us, Sergeant Elliot, of my platoon, came up 
to me, and, pointing to a tree on our right, said, 
" Captain, I see something stirring in that tree ; it 
looks like a Spaniard. I'd like to shoot at it." I 
took a good look at the tree ; it was so dense I 
could not see into it. " It may be a Cuban," 
I said, " or one of our men. You had better 
not shoot," or something to that effect, and we 
went on. Soon afterwards, while we were lying 
down, Private Stovall was shot through the heart. 
He turned over and died, exclaiming, " God o' 
mercy! God o' mercy! God o' mercy!" The same 
bullet that killed him went through the hip and 
lodged in the thigh of Private Bledsoe. About 
two weeks afterwards Stovall's body, swollen from 
decomposition, and its eyes plucked out, was 
found hid in the tall grass where we left it. 
114 



UND E R F I R E 

Many a noble fellow dropped and died that day, 
as Stovall did, perforce unnoticed by "the Cap- 
tain" whom he was blindly and loyally following. 

Who can estimate the responsibility of leading 
men in battle? About one hundred yards farther 
on we came upon a squad of infantrymen sitl 
in the shade of trees around an officer who was 
lying on his back bleeding from the face. While 
we stood there conferring with these men, I 
heard one of them say to another, " I guess he's 
dead now." I believe that this officer and Private 
Stovall were both shot by the sharp-shooter whom 
Sergeant Elliot wanted to skirmish with. The 
infantrymen told us that the Spaniards were ad- 
vancing and our men falling back. We could 
not see either. For a few moments I was afraid 
that we were cut off, and destined to be carried 
into Santiago as prisoners or massacred where we 
were. On our left was a stream, probably the 
one which we had already forded, and from the 
other side of it came sounds of voices and lead 
reports of firing. We could not tell whether 
they were Spanish or American, but thou., lit we 
had better take our chances on their being 
American. So we quickly waded the stream 
and scrambled up the opposite bank, helping one 
another, as it was about as high as a man and 
quite steep. I believe I was the first on 
recognize through the thickets in our front 
uniform of our troops, which I did by the sti 
"5 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

on the officers' and non-commissioned officers' 
trousers. Pushing on a short distance, we came 
upon a road lined with our infantry. It was on 
the far edge of the woods, and beyond it stretched 
a plain about six hundred yards wide, overgrown 
with tall grass like that through which we had 
lately passed. At the farther edge of the plain 
was a hill about one hundred and fifty feet high, 
the side towards us sloping at an angle of about 
forty degrees. On the top of the hill was a 
block-house and a structure that looked liked a 
shed. Here and there a puff of light smoke in- 
dicated that it was manned by infantry who were 
firing at us. I was at last where I had been try- 
ing to get — at the front. The hill was the posi- 
tion now so well known as the San Juan Hill. 
About one hundred yards in front of our main 
line, which I joined with my men, was a thin 
line of infantry firing at the enemy on the hill 
from behind a gentle swell in the ground. 

I will now give the plan of battle as I deduce 
it from published reports and other literature of 
the campaign, and conversation with officers who 
participated in it. General Lawton, with his di- 
vision and Capron's Battery, was to capture El 
Caney. This was to be accomplished by 8 or 9 
A.M. In the mean time, Kent's division, and the 
cavalry division under Sumner, were to take po- 
sition just beyond the San Juan River, the cav- 
alry on the right of the road from El Pozo to 
116 



UNDER FIRE 

Santiago, the infantry on the left, and await or- 
ders. On the fall of El Caney, Lawton vva 
turn to his left, executing a sort of grand left 

wheel, and take position on the right of the cav- 
alry, when orders were to issue for a general ad- 
vance. It was four o'clock in the afternoon be- 
fore Lawton succeeded in capturing El Caney, 

and about noon on the following day when be- 
got into position on the right of the cavalry. 
Now how did it happen that the attack on San 
Juan was made about twenty-four hours earlier 
than was contemplated in General Shafter's plan 
of battle? The primary cause was that Kent's 
and Sumner's divisions were ordered forward 
prematurely.'- They should not have moved be- 
yond El Pozo until it was ascertained that Law- 
ton had taken El Caney, and, once started, the 
three divisions should have gone right on into 
Santiago. Kent's division halted and deployed, 
as ordered, on the line of the San Juan River, its 
right resting on the road to Santiago. The cav- 
alry division, under Sumner, deployed along the 
Las Guamas Creek, its left resting on this road. 
Both Kent and Sumner had received orders in 
the morning from staff-officers of General Shafter 
to halt on the edge of the woods, and these en 

* "After the battle of El Caney was well opened 
sound of the small-arms' fire caused us to believe tli.u 
Lawton was driving tin- enemy before him." 
Shafter's Report.] 

"7 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

about on the line formed by the San Juan River 
and Las Guamas Creek. General Shatter is 
doubtless in error in stating, as he does in his 
report, that General Sumner's orders of the 
morning required him to cross the San Juan 
River. 

The position taken up as described, within de- 
cisive range of the enemy's infantry rifles, our 
artillery doing nothing to keep down his fire, 
was soon found to be untenable. Between 9 
and 9.30 A.M., General Hawkins, commanding 
Kent's first brigade, and forming the right of 
the division, said to General Sumner, in the 
presence of General Kent, " We cannot stay 
here. It will not do for us to retire. The only 
alternative is to attack." And turning to his 
commander, he added, " If you will authorize it, 
General Kent, I will move my brigade around 
here against the enemy's right, and, with General 
Sumner co-operating, will engage to carry the 
enemy's position." Just then Lieutenant-Colonel 
Miley, General Shafter's chief of staff, came up, 
and General Hawkins made the proposition to 
him in the presence of Generals Kent and Sum- 
ner. It was about 10.30 A.M. when Lieutenant- 
Colonel Miley said, " General Kent, if you have 
no objection, I will order this movement in 
General Shafter's name." " Very well," said 
General Kent, who then rode off to hurry up 
the remainder of his division. Neither General 
118 



UNDKR FIRE 

Wheeler nor General Shafter had anything 1" 

with the initiation of the attack. It was sul 
quently to this informal council of war, the pro- 
ceedings of which I have told as they were told 
to me by a member, that I joined I lawkins's bri- 
gade. The Sixth and Sixteenth Regulars were 
in position, waiting for the Seventy- first New- 
York Volunteers, which Hawkins meant to place 
in rear of these regiments as a reserve. Gen- 
eral Kent found the Seventy- first New York 
and started it forward, and also sent a not> 
Hawkins informing him of the fact; but neither 
the regiment nor the note ever reached its des- 
tination. 



XIII 
SAN JUAN 

At the point where we came upon it the road 
made a bend, the part to our right inclining tow- 
ards the enemy's position at an angle of about 
forty-five degrees, that to our left being about 
parallel to it. The part to our right seemed to 
be raked by the enemy's fire, and I noticed a 
single officer walking up and down this road in 
rear of his men. From conversation with officers 
of the Sixteenth Infantry, I understand that 
this was Captain G. H. Palmer, of that regiment. 
I thought that I would do as he was doing, and 
then I thought I wouldn't. I compromised be- 
tween standing up and lying down: I sat down. 
Soon afterwards Sergeant Elliot spoke up, and 
said, "Captain, you had better lie down, sir; it's 
pretty dangerous sitting up there." I thought 
the suggestion a good one, and lay down. The 
bullets were plunging into the road from the 
front as well as enfilading it from our right. 
Sergeant Elliot tells me that a man directly in 
rear of me was shot through the forehead, and 
that he has never been able to see how the bullet 



SAN JUAN 

reached him without hitting inc. I ol 
both here and in the road which I had crossed 
on my way to the front that there was no line of 
file-closers or officers in rear of the firing-line. 
The officers, non-commissioned officers, and pri- 
vates were all in one line, practically shoulder to 
shoulder, and could be distinguished only by 
their uniforms. Sergeant Elliot asked my per- 
mission to go up to the fence and do some fir- 
ing. I said, "Go ahead, Sergeant, if you think 
you can do any good." lie according]}- s1 
up by the fence and fired seven shots, when, 
having attracted the enemy's fire, he fell back 
and lay down. 

Along the side of the road in which we were 
lying ran a barbed-wire fence. I was soon c< 
tating as to how we should get through that 
fence when the time should come for us to ad- 
vance. There was not a pair of wire-nippers in 
my troop. I understand, on good authority, that 
there were two hundred pairs on board our trans- 
port, the Leona. I wriggled myself up to on 
the fence-posts and dug at the foot of it with 
both hands, but soon concluded that I could net 
accomplish anything in that way. I then st 
up, and pulled and pushed at the post, but made 
no appreciable impression upon it. So I la)- 
down again and left the fence alone. 

It looked to me, while lying in this road, as if 
the advanced line t«> which I have referred fell 
\z\ 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

back, but I am told that it did not. I asked the 
officer who was walking up and down in the 
road if it was not time for us to advance to its 
support. He replied that he supposed it would 
be pretty soon, or something to that effect, and 
went on walking as before. One man, who had 
no doubt been in the advance-line, fell back and 
halted directly in front of me in the tall grass on 
the opposite side of the fence. The silhouette 
of his manly young face and figure as he nestled 
up to the fence, his gun clutched in both hands, 
and his eyes riveted on the hill, are indelibly im- 
pressed upon my memory. I remarked to him 
that he had better come through the fence. 
Some one added, with true soldierly bluntness, 
" A man was shot there not long ago. 1 ' He took 
a glance our way out of the corners of his eyes, 
and then replaced them upon the hill, seeming to 
close his fingers a little tighter, and so remained, 
as if hypnotized. 

Suddenly my attention was attracted by a cry 
of pain, followed by moaning and groaning on 
my right. Turning my head, I saw a man sitting 
up holding his hand on his side. " Somebody 
take my gun," he said, " and blow my brains 
out. Won't somebody finish me ? O, God! O, 
God!" He and Sergeant Elliot had been shoot- 
ing at the hill. With the aid of Sergeant Elliot 
I examined his wound, as I thought. All that I 
found was an abrasion of two ribs. I told him 
122 



S A X J I " A X 

that he was but slightly hurt. He said, " Oh, 

Captain, I can't breathe." I replied, " Yes, you 
can breathe, or you couldn't make so much n 
Now be quiet." He was quiet after that. I 
have since heard from Sergeant Elliot that this 
man was shot through the bowels, and hav 
proached myself for my impatience with him. 
He must have been wounded at least twice. 
Before long I was to know more than I did then 
about the sensations produced by Mauser bul- 
lets, and to have wounds of my own overlooked. 
While gazing through the wire fence, I sud- 
denly observed near the edge of the open field a 
swarm of men breaking forward from the direc- 
tion of the road on my left. I jumped to my 
feet and, under the inspiration of the moment, 
took hold of the nearest fence-post, and put one 
foot on the lowest wire close to the post. Step- 
ping from wire to wire as on the rounds of a Kid- 
der, I climbed to the top of the fence, and 
jumped from it down into the field, calling 
as I struck the ground, " Come along, men !" Af- 
ter a momentary pause to see my men start 
through or over the fence, I struck out as f.i 
the tall grass would permit me towards the com- 
mon objective of the mass of men which I i 
saw surging forward on my right and left. It 
was San Juan Hill, which Hawkins's brigade had 
undertaken to carry by assault. The cavalry 
vision started forward, I believe, at the s 
[23 



r i ago c a i : : a i g n 

time. In an ac: - I ' the attack ot San 

ted in 

Mag i ■' ■ ■ 

- ■ : 

jun: : - - ■ -•- 

: i Colonel Roosevelt, as he, with his R<; 
Riders, broke cover and started across the 
plain. It is due to : I iy that what, i at 

. - • fee 1 
was done ' fchoot I 

It was never my good 
. . : - in 

.a. 

I had - the result of om at- 

I thought ..." - - at 

ind almost e: >nld 

be brought to a halt and have to awa 

rts befor . I the i 

. -. 

: . idual men 

halted to fire sr the head 
in front of \. umd the null 

I wa - " . " - - . - 

t any comma It 

know of, and the me- I fir 

their own accord. I tri 

I thought it ... ' stard the ad- 

vance, and :ar me tried a 

[ even 

- . [bullets 



EOSt 

— 

"- - . - 

: 
: - 

- 

s - . 

to doe 

E 
the soilec 
to Cubans 

- 

. - - than 3 
I . - 

- 

. - 
- ■ 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

men in this line were, I believe, classified marks- 
men and sharp-shooters. 

As we approached the hill I asked an officer 
near me whether he did not think we should try 
to halt the men, and open a regular fire upon the 
top of the hill. He replied to the effect that we 
could not halt them, and that they might as well 
keep a-going. So on we went. Just then, bang! 
whiz ! went a cannon-shot over our heads. Our 
artillery had started shelling the top of the 
hill. I wondered whether the artillery would 
see us, and stop firing. A moment afterwards 
it did stop, but, in the mean time, Captain Mc- 
Farland, of the Sixteenth Infantry, among the 
foremost on the hill, was struck in the back 
of the head and disabled by a piece of shell. 
When I was about half-way to the top my wind 
completely gave out, and I threw myself down 
for a moment's rest. On getting up, I stood 
looking at the scene below me. About half a 
mile across the bright green field, dotted here 
and there with stately trees in which lurked the 
reckless and murderous Spanish sharp-shooters, 
stretched the on-coming shouting and shooting 
mass of men in blue. A single banner of stars 
and stripes, out-stretched by its cleaving of the 
motionless air, fluttered proudly and inspiringly 
over them, its shining spear seeming to point the 
way forward and upward. I felt as if that human 
billow would sweep away the enemy, hill and all, 
126 



SAN JUAN 

and was never so proud of being an American 
at that moment. 

The enemy's position was about as nearl) 
as a real position can be. I have seen the famous 
stone wall at Fredericksburg backed by Marye's 
Heights. It is hardly a circumstance to this 
position. San Juan was more suggestive of 
Gettysburg than of Fredericksburg. Our attack 
seemed hardly less desperate than that of 
Pickett's division. At Gettysburg a cannonade 
of several hours' duration, designed to shake the 
morale of the defence, preceded the advance of 
the attacking infantry, which during this period 
of preparation was kept out of fire. At 
Juan there was hardly any preparation by ar- 
tillery, and the infantry and dismounted cavalry, 
who made the attack, were exposed to the enemy's 
fire for about an hour immediately preceding 
their advance, most of them not being able or 
permitted to fire back. I understand that it was 
not the commanding General's intention that San 
Juan should be attacked when it was. The troops. 
it seems, got out of his hands, which, as I have 
already intimated, was no more than I exp( I 
would happen the first time the)- should go into 
action. I am now satisfied that the Spaniards 
did not intend to make much of a stand at San 
Juan. It was only an outpost or advance ; 
tion, and they began to retire from it, I believe. 
soon after our advance commenced, in order to 
i-7 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

establish themselves securely in their main posi- 
tion, which we never assailed. It is hardly fair 
to say that we drove them from San Juan. They 
gave us the position. If they had chosen to keep 
it, as I believe they had resolved to hold their 
main position in rear of it, we would at least 
have been checked, and might have been re- 
pulsed. As I was about to face to the front and 
go forward again, I felt as if my left leg were 
struck by a cannon-ball, the little finger of my 
left hand caught in a stone-crusher, and my right 
shoulder clawed by a wild-cat. I sat down and 
got out my first-aid package. Every officer and 
soldier carried a package of bandages for use in 
rendering first aid to the injured. In our regi- 
ment they were ordered to be kept in the left 
breast-pocket, so that they could be readily found 
by the surgeon. 



XIV 
WOUNDED 

Sergeant William J. Sciiuck, of Company 
D, Sixth Infantry, came up to me and inquired if I 
was wounded. I replied that I was, and pointing 
to my left leg, said that I supposed I would have 
to lose it. He must have " been there " before, for 
he smiled as he answered, " It may not be so 
bad as that, Captain." With a pocket-knife he 
cut the leg of my trousers up to my knee, and 
found, in the fleshy part of the calf, two holes, 
where a bullet had gone in and come out. lie 
called my attention to them and to the fact that 
they were not bleeding. I could hardly believe 
my eyes. I would not have been surprised if I 
had found the bulk of my leg from the knee- 
down hanging by a shred, or discovered that it 
had been carried up the hill by the enemy's 
missile. I handed the Sergeant my first-aid 
package, remarking that it was not perfectly 
fresh. I had opened it out of curiosity, and to 
learn how to use it, before I landed in Cuba, not 
knowing that parts of the contents, being anti- 
septic, would be injured by exposure to the air. 
i 129 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

The Sergeant took out his own package, and pro- 
ceeded to dress my wounds with his bandages. 
I told him that he might need them himself, 
but he insisted upon usjng them. The bullet 
which went through my leg came from the direc- 
tion of our men, or from my proper rear. It 
may have been sent by a Spanish sharp-shooter 
left behind by our advancing line, but was more 
probably the accidental or wild shot of one of 
our men. It may be that, as I rose from the 
ground facing our line, I was taken for a Span- 
iard. Many of our officers and men must have 
been in doubt or ignorance as to the uniform 
worn by the Spaniards, especially by the offi- 
cers. 

A number of my men came up to me inquir- 
ing if I was hurt, and offering to assist me. I 
told them that I was being attended to, and not 
to stop on my account, but to keep right on, 
that they were doing splendidly, and I was proud 
of them. My platoon went to the top of the 
hill with the infantry, and was afterwards con- 
ducted by an officer of the Tenth Cavalry to the 
line of the regiment a short distance to the right. 
In going up the San Juan Hill three of my men 
especially distinguished themselves; they were 
Sergeant James Elliot, Corporal John Walker, 
and Private (now Corporal) Luchious Smith. 
Sergeant Elliot and Private Smith were, during 
the ascent of the hill, constantly among the 
no 



WOUNDED 

bolder few who voluntarily made themselves 
ground -scouts, drawing the attention of tin- 
enemy from the main line upon themseh 
Corporal Walker was with the handful of fearless 
spirits who accompanied Lieutenant J. G. Ord, 
of the Sixth U. S. Infantry, forming, with that 
splendid young soldier, the point of General 
Hawkins's gallant brigade, the head and front of 
the assault. Following is Corporal Walker's own 
story, told under oath : 



State of Alabama, 
County of Madison. 

Personally appeared before me, the undersigned. 
Corporal John Walker, Troop D, Tenth Cavalry, who, 
being duly sworn according to law, deposes and says 
that on the ist of July, 1898, he was engaged in the 
assault on San Juan Hill, at a point where there was a 
block-house, a shed, and a line of intrenchments ; that 
just before the foremost assailants reached the foot of 
the hill our artillery commenced firing over the assail- 
ants at the enemy on the top of the hill ; that when the 
deponent was about half-way up the hill, the only per- 
sons near him, except an officer who was disabled, \. 
Lieutenant Ord, of the Sixth U. S. Infantry, and Private 
(now Corporal) Luchious Smith, Troop D, Tenth Cav- 
alry; that the main line was about fifty yards in rear of 
this party, with a light scattering of men between it and 
this party; that the said Lieutenant Ord. evidently ob- 
serving that our artillery tire had caused a slowing up 
in the main line, called out in a loud tone, looking I 
ards the main line and waving his hat, " Come on, men, 
131 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

we've got them on the go!" having repeatedly before 
urged the men on with voice and gesture; that the de- 
ponent reached the intrenchments about fifty yards in 
advance of the main line ; that the only persons near 
him at that time were the said Lieutenant Ord, a private 
of the Sixth U. S. Infantry, and a private of the Six- 
teenth U. S. Infantry; that about twenty yards to his 
left and about on a line with him was the said Private 
Luchious Smith ; that about twenty-five yards in rear of 
the deponent was a scattering of other soldiers, fore- 
most among whom was Sergeant James Elliot, Troop 
D, Tenth Cavalry ; that the deponent found two Span- 
iards alive and a number dead and wounded in the in- 
trenchments ; that the two former threw up their hands 
and surrendered ; that the deponent took from one of 
them a pearl-handled pistol and gave it to the said Lieu- 
tenant Ord; that the Lieutenant said, "Let us go to 
this block -house and capture these men in it"; that 
having gone about four yards in the direction of the 
block-house the Lieutenant stopped behind a tree, and, 
leaning to one side, looked in the direction of the re- 
treating enemy ; that as he did so, he was shot with a 
pistol directly under the chin by a Spaniard on the other 
side of the tree ; that as he fell at the Corporal's feet, he 
said, " If we had the rest of the Tenth Cavalry here, 
we could capture this whole command "; that the Lieu- 
tenant died about five minutes afterwards, or about ten 
minutes after he was shot ; that the man who shot him 
ran off ; that the deponent fired at him twice, and saw 
him fall ; that he and the forementioned private of the 
Sixteenth U. S. Infantry examined the man who had 
shot Lieutenant Ord immediately after the Corporal had 
fired at him, and found that he was shot through the 
body twice, both shots going through the small of the 
back ; that he was apparently dead, and that he, the de- 



WOU.NDED 

poncnt, is satisfied that the man in question was killed 
by him, the deponent. 

Further deponent sayeth not. 

John Walker, 
Corporal Troop D, Tenth Cavalry. 
Sworn to and subscribed before me, at Camp A. <> 
Forse, Iluntsville, Alabama, this 19th day of December, 
1898. S. D. Freeman, 

First Lieutenant, Tenth Cavalry. 
Judge Advocate, General Court-Martial. 

First Sergeant W. H. Givens was ever at his 
post exercising a steadying or encouraging in- 
fluence upon the men, and conducting himself 
like the thorough soldier which I have long 
known him to be. 

I took into action, including Lieutenant Ken- 
nington's platoon, but not including the two 
men left to guard the packs, two (2) officers and 
forty -eight (48) men. My losses were as fol- 
lows : 

Killed: Private George Stovall. 

Wounded : Captain John Bigelow, Jr.. 
geant George Dyals, Sergeant Willis Hatcher, 
Privates J. H. Campbell, Henry Fearn, Fred 
Shockley, Harry Sturgis, James F. Taylor. 

Missing: Private James Clay. 

After Sergeant Schuck had dressed my leg and 
little finger, I got up and stood for some time 
watching troops rushing across the plain, some in 
lines and swarms, some in long, thin columns. 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

serving that the firing seemed to be growing hot- 
ter on my right, as I stood facing to the rear, and 
hearing some one near me say that our men were 
having a hot time on the right, I called out tow- 
ards the left that troops were needed on the right, 
and saw several regiments go streaking off in that 
direction. As I hobbled off to the rear, accom- 
panied by a wounded infantryman, and leaning 
on his gun, I looked around for litter-bearers. 
Some years before, while serving at a frontier 
post, I attended a lecture, given by a medical offi- 
cer, on the care of wounded in battle. On the 
strength of what I there heard, I told my com- 
panion that we would soon come upon first-aid 
stations, and find Red Cross flags on posts and 
trees, indicating the way to a division hospital. 
As we started from the foot of the hill, across the 
plain, a medical officer, probably a regimental 
surgeon, came running up to us from a column 
on our left, and asked if there was anything he 
could do for us. I said I thought not, as our 
wounds had been dressed, and he hastened back 
to his post. Bullets flew thick and fast over 
our heads, but at a safe distance. Thinking we 
could make better time on a road than in the 
tall grass of the plain, we inclined to our left and 
got into the road in which we had lain, about 
midway between San Juan Hill and where I had 
myself lain with my men. I frequently stopped 
and looked back at the hill. From the road I saw 
i34 



WOUNDED 

our Gatling guns, the men and pieces standing 
out against the sky on a spur of the hill sloping 
off to the right as I faced the hill, the pieces 
pointing towards the left, their steady, monoto- 
nous grindings contrasting with the gusts and 
squalls of our musketry. Here and there along 
the side of the hill, under cover of its crest, stood 
a group of mounted officers. 

As I went on down the road I passed a num- 
ber of corpses lying with their faces up, covered 
with pieces of blanket. Coming to the place 
where I had lain, I found the man whom I had 
examined when he was shot, lying on his back, 
his head propped up, looking pretty comfortable. 
Not far beyond him I caught the glazed, staring 
eyes of a man reclining on a low bank by the 
side of the road with a pool of clotted blood in 
his open mouth. I had been joined by this time 
by Private Boarman, of my troop, whom the First 
Sergeant had sent to look after me. My first 
impulse was to send him back to the troop, but, 
appreciating the motive of First Sergeant Givens, 
and the man's evident feeling for me, I had not 
the heart to do it. 

The bullets were passing pretty close to the 
ground. At the suggestion of the men who were 
with me, I lay down in the road and waited for 
them to hunt around for a dressing-station or 
field -hospital. They did not find any, but the 
infantryman had found a place where wounded 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

men were being gathered together. It was in a 
belt of trees between a creek and the plain over 
which we had charged, at the point where a road 
crossed the creek. I believe it has been called 
The Bloody Ford. A line-officer had gotten a 
few able - bodied men together, and had them 
gather the long grass and make a sort of bed of 
it under cover of a slight embankment. A num- 
ber of wounded officers and men lay stretched 
out on this bed. A large camp-fire blazed near 
by. While I lay here bullets whistled through 
the foliage overhead and the woods across the 
creek. The din of battle, growing now fainter, 
now louder, kept us constantly interested in the 
situation at the front. Every little while a 
wounded man would raise himself so as to see 
over the embankment, and take a look at San 
Juan Hill. One poor fellow, while doing so, fell 
back with a groan, mortally wounded. There was 
no surgeon or nurse present. Wounded men 
kept coming in and lying down with us, or strid- 
ing across the creek to make their way to the 
Division Hospital. Now and then the body of a 
dead officer would be laid down in front of us. 
But I do not remember seeing a man brought in 
or go by on a regular litter. The wounded, as I 
remember, carried themselves or were carried by 
other men, either on their backs or on impro- 
vised litters, made with guns or poles and blank- 
ets or articles of clothing. When I last com- 
136 



WOUNDED 

manded a troop at an army -post, troop and 
company commanders were required to have four 
men constantly under training at the post hos- 
pital as litter-bearers. These men had to be ex- 
cused from military drill, stables, or anything else 
that would interfere with this training. I enter- 
tained the belief that if I ever saw a battle I 
should experience or witness a practical applica- 
tion of the most approved methods of litter- 
bearing on an adequate scale. 



XV 
IN DIVISION HOSPITAL 

LATE in the afternoon an ambulance arrived. 
The surgeon in charge of it picked out the more 
serious cases, including me among them. My 
old friend Ducat, of the Twenty-fourth, with a 
wound in the abdomen, was laid on his back in 
the bottom of the vehicle. Another officer was 
stretched out on one of the seats, his head resting 
in the lap of the surgeon. On the same seat 
with me sat Captain Fornance, of the Thirteenth 
Infantry, with a mortal wound through the body. 
As we were slowly drawn over the rough road to 
the Division Hospital, about two miles distant, I 
was moved with sympathy and admiration for 
the wounded men I saw trudging along. There 
was nothing on wheels to carry them, not even 
an army wagon. The road seemed lined for 
some distance with men of the Seventy-first New 
York, who did not look as if they had been near 
a fight. 

We reached the hospital after dark. I was the 
first to get out of the ambulance. As I hobbled 
up to one of the operating-tents the table, covered 
138 



IN DIVISION HOSPITAL 

with white oil-cloth, was being sponged off. The 
sponge was thrown into a bucket of bloody water, 
the surgeon called " Next," and I stepped in. 
With the assistance of an attendant I laid my- 
self out on the table. After my leg and finger 
had been dressed, the surgeon was about to have 
me helped down. I remarked that I believed that 
I was hurt in the shoulder. He examined me 
there, and replied, " I should say you were." 
This was a surface wound, a furrow, not unlike a 
cut. It was soon dressed, and I made room for 
the next subject. I was agreeably surprised in 
getting off without the loss of my little finger, the 
bone of which was shattered, for I was prepared 
to submit to its amputation. The ground about 
the tent was strewn with wounded men lying 
on it, among whom other men, mostly wounded, 
were moving or standing. I lay down on the 
grass, and tried to go to sleep. I had not eaten 
anything since breakfast, and had no blanket or 
overcoat. On the way to the hospital I had 
looked out for the packs of my troop, but in the 
dusk and darkness I could not recognize them. 
Private Boarman, whom I had sent to look for 
my pack, sent me word that he had not been 
able to find it. I had quite resigned myself to a 
night of discomfort, if not of suffering, when I 
was asked by a soldier standing over me if he 
could not do something for me. I told him that 
I did not think he could. On learning from me 
i39 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

that I had nothing to eat, he asked me if I would 
not like something. I said I would. He then told 
me that he could get me some coffee, bacon, hard- 
tack, and canned tomatoes. I declined the coffee, 
but accepted the rest. With my approval, he 
prepared the hard - tack as soldiers commonly 
do, by soaking it in water and frying it in bacon 
grease. While I was eating this supper he learned 
from me that I had no covering, and at once pro- 
posed to get me a blanket. I said, " You 
have but one blanket, and need it as much as 
I." He answered, " I bunk with other men, sir, 
and their blankets will do for me," and went and 
got his blanket and put it over me. I had 
hardly turned over after this to go to sleep when 
I felt a touch on my shoulder, and, looking up, 
saw a hospital-corps man, who said that he recog- 
nized me as an officer and that there was a place 
provided under cover for wounded officers. I 
went with him to a litter under a tent-fly, where 
I lay down among other wounded officers. I 
passed a comfortable night, except that I was 
disturbed once or twice by other patients calling 
for the attendant. The latter was a soldier. He 
was constantly under the fly or near by, and always 
prompt in answering calls. While the officers 
were thus provided for, the men had to shift for 
themselves. I understand that most of the 
wounded soldiers spent the night under the open 
sky, without blankets, and with nothing to eat. 
140 



IN DIVISION HOSPITAL 

Early in the morning the man who had fur- 
nished me supper and a blanket came to see 
how I was, and asked what I would like for break- 
fast. I took everything that he had to give me, 
which was what he had offered me for supper — 
including the coffee. When I had finished 
breakfast, he asked what I would like for lunch, 
and when he should bring it. I thanked him, 
and told him that I hoped to be out of that 
hospital by lunch-time, and that if I was not I 
would trust to the hospital for nourishment. I 
wanted to return his blanket, but he insisted 
upon my keeping it. I promised to send it back 
to him from Siboney, where I expected to go. I 
had taken his name, troop, and regiment the 
evening before, and regret very much that I 
have lost my memorandum. If I remember 
rightly, he was a private in Troop D of the First 
Cavalry, camped as a guard near the hospital. 
The food that he brought me was part of his 
own ration. 



XVI 
IN GENERAL HOSPITAL 

Early in the day I applied to the surgeon in 
charge to be sent down to Siboney, with a view 
to being shipped to the United States. I was 
informed that there was nothing but army 
wagons to move the wounded in, and that if I 
could stand the trip, I might be sent down in the 
afternoon, that during the forenoon only men 
who could stand up would be moved. I got off 
that afternoon in the first wagon that carried 
men lying down. The bottom of the wagon was 
covered with a layer of grass about thick enough 
to hide the planks, but not to form much of a 
cushion. An army wagon, be it known, has no 
springs. My companions were mostly officers. 
Although we travelled at a walk, the jarring and 
jolting kept us bracing ourselves and gritting our 
teeth for the nine miles or more that we had to 
get over. We passed many wounded men making 
their way on foot. At the suggestion of Captain 
Rodman, of the Twentieth Infantry, sitting next 
to me, we stopped and, crowding ourselves a 
little closer, took in one of them. "A noble 
142 



IN GENERAL HOSPITAL 

fellow," the Captain said, belonging to his com- 
pany. Before we got to the end of our ride 
that soldier got us to stop and let him out. He 
preferred to walk. 

Siboney seemed to consist chiefly of a row of 
houses facing the beach, about two hundred 
yards from the water. The principal, if not only, 
street ran in front of these houses. The hospital 
consisted of a row of " hospital " tents facing 
these houses and the beach, for they were open 
at both ends. They stood in pairs, back to back, 
and opening into each other. We were placed 
in a tent next to the street, each on a wire cot, 
without mattress. The nights were quite cool, 
and with but one blanket I should have slept 
better on the ground than on the cot. But I 
succeeded in getting another blanket from the 
hospital. I spent a good deal of my time here 
looking out on the street from my cot. The 
houses, I was told, were formerly used by the 
Spaniards as barracks. At present they were oc- 
cupied by Cuban families. They have since been 
burned as a precaution against yellow- fever. 
They all had narrow porches on the street, and 
on these porches men and women were taking 
their ease, and children playing, all day long. 
The street was always alive with soldiers and 
citizens, wagons, ambulances, pack-trains, etc. 
The most interesting sight that presented itself 
to me was a batch of Spanish prisoners — I bc- 
i43 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

lieve they were taken at El Caney— escorted by 
a troop of our mounted cavalry, armed with car- 
bine, sabre, and pistol. The people in the street 
stood still, and those in the houses came out on 
the porches. It was the first and only time 
during the campaign that I saw a Spanish soldier. 
I should not have known these from Cubans if I 
had seen them by themselves. Like Cubans, 
they were small, lightly built men. They marched 
at a good gait, keeping up with the long-legged 
horses of their escort, who seemed to be making 
from three to four miles an hour. They bore 
themselves, I thought, with true Spanish dignity, 
holding their heads high even when glancing to 
right or left at the staring crowd. Cuban women 
hung over the railings of the porches pointing and 
jeering at them. The Cuban men watched them 
with comparative gravity. About the middle of 
the column a couple of prisoners bore on their 
shoulders the ends of a hammock in which a 
human figure lay coiled up. " Poor fellow," I 
thought, " how much better off I am than you !" 
But I have something to say about my trials. 

Nobody came to me here to give me a sol- 
dier's ration. By evening, having had no lunch, 
I was pretty hungry. What food and drink I 
got here was brought or sent to the officers by 
Chaplain Bateman, or another chaplain whose 
name I did not learn. These two gentlemen 
worked heroically, ministering to the wants of 
144 



IN GENERAL HOSPITAL 

the sick and wounded. No men who took part 
in the campaign are worthier of recognition for 
faithful and meritorious services than they are. 
But to speak for myself: I felt the pangs of hun- 
ger. One of the surgeons or civilian doctors 
told me that there were no rations to feed us on 
but those furnished for the hospital-corps. The 
Commissary Officer, when I quoted this to him, 
said that there was an abundance of rations 
within a stone's-throw of the hospital, and that 
the medical department could have all that it 
wanted of them on requisition. There was no 
nurse or other attendant in our tent. The sink, 
I was told, was several hundred yards away. 
There was no earth closet, and, so far as I could 
learn, no vessel to use in lieu of one. I remem- 
ber our getting one or two persons to hunt 
around for accommodations of this sort, and re- 
ceiving from them an old tomato-can and a stone 
crock, which they had picked up outside of the 
hospital. We had generally to wait on ourselves, 
or watch for an opportunity to call in a passing 
soldier or civilian to render us such service as we 
needed. Red Cross nurses, with their neat white 
caps and aprons, flitting past our tent, made the 
situation the more trying. They seemed busy, 
and, I suppose, could not attend to us. 

In the evening I had my wounds dressed 
again. When my little finger was laid bare, the 
attendant remarked to the surgeon, " I suppose 

K 145 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

that will have to come off, sir?" The surgeon 
replied, "No, I think we can save that finger; 
the Captain, I suppose, would rather have a stiff 
finger than none at all." I am grateful to that 
surgeon, though I sometimes think the finger in 
question would not have been very much of a 
loss. After the three wounds which had been 
dressed before had been attended to, I raised 
myself to get off the table, and as I did so felt 
a sort of itching in my left thigh. I remarked 
to the surgeon that something made me feel as 
if I had been hit there. He examined the place 
and found a bullet -hole. He then looked for 
another, and not finding it, concluded that the 
bullet was still in me. He would not probe for 
it, he said, but when I got North I should have 
it located by means of the X-rays and cut out. 



XVII 
TO TAMPA BAY AND FORT McPHERSON, GEORGIA 

VERY soon after arriving in the hospital at 
Siboney, I made application to be sent on board 
the Olivette, which I thought was about to re- 
turn to the United States. I was promised that 
my wish should be gratified. In anticipation of 
my departure, I procured from the Commissary 
several cans of peaches and meat, a pipe and 
a pound of tobacco, did them up in the blanket 
belonging to the soldier who had shared his 
rations with me at the Division Hospital, and 
gave the package to a teamster to deliver or 
have delivered for me to the soldier. I have 
never heard whether they ever reached their 
destination. 

I have before me bits of paper on which are 
scratched the messages that passed on the fol- 
lowing day (July 3d) between Major La Garde, 
surgeon in charge, and myself, on the ways and 
means of getting me aboard ship. I trust that 
I am not betraying confidence in presenting this 
informal correspondence to the reader. 
i47 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

Captain BlGELOW, — You can be transferred to the 
Olivette — you and Captain Ducat — by going to the 
landing. Let me know what transportation you re- 
quire. L. A. L. 

Dear Major, — We shall each require a litter with four 
men— so that the bearers can be relieved. Sincerely, 

J. Bigelow, Jr. 

I am having a travois made ; it will be ready in two 
hours. La Garde. 

[Two or three hours later. ] 

Dear Doctor, — The travois has not come. Sin- 
cerely, J. Bigelow, Jr. 

Travois is ready. Great confusion. Transfer of wound- 
ed to boats very slow. Wait ! La Garde. 

I waited. When a medical officer, on his 
round that afternoon, asked me whether my 
wounds had been dressed since the night before, 
I replied that they had not, but that I expected 
to have them dressed on the " Hospital Ship." 
Late in the afternoon I was hauled in a travois 
to the landing. A number of officers and men 
were waiting to be taken off. Something, I be- 
lieve, was being done to the landing. At any 
rate, I lay here on a litter about an hour. I was 
informed by a medical officer at the landing that 
the vessel that I was to go on was not the Oli- 
vette, but the Cherokee. I showed my message 
148 



TAMPA BAY — FORT McPHERSON 

from Major La Garde, but it made no difference. 
The Olivette, I understood afterwards, was full, 
and was not to go to the United States, but to 
remain as a floating hospital at Siboney. 

At last Chaplain Bateman, who was conducting 
the embarkation, sent word that he was ready for 
me. A small boat touched at the landing, and 
a throng of men pushed towards it. Above the 
shuffling and clattering of feet came the Chaplain's 
organ voice, " Stand back, men ! This is a special 
boat for Captain Bigelow. No one else is to get 
in it." The sound of feet died away. The men 
ranged themselves on both sides of the pier, and 
the litter on which I lay went down the aisle to 
the boat, which was bobbing up and down and 
bumping against the dock. The litter, with me 
on it, was passed to the men in the boat, who 
laid it on the seats, the boat pushed off, and I 
was rowed out about a quarter of a mile to the 
Cherokee, where the boat, with crew and all, was 
hoisted to the top of the rail, the litter handed 
over to men on deck, and I was carried into the 
saloon. I was given a bowl of soup and a bread- 
and-butter sandwich, the best thing that I had 
eaten since I left the Leona, but not by any 
means enough to satisfy me. I soon found out 
that the Cherokee was a hospital ship only in 
name. 

My wounds were not dressed that day. The 
next day, July 4th, we remained at anchor, tak- 
149 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

ing sick and wounded aboard. This day my 
wounds were dressed by a surgeon, Major Heil, 
of the Regular Army, who was not fit for duty, 
being himself on the sick report. He found an- 
other hole in my thigh, establishing the fact that 
the bullet which had gone in at one place had 
come out at another. 

I was clothed in the uniform and undercloth- 
ing in which I had been wounded, and had no 
change for either. Most of the officers and men 
were in the same fix. There was no apparent 
relief for the men. But most, if not all, of the 
officers had underclothing among their posses- 
sions on the transports that had brought them 
to Cuba. These vessels were riding at anchor 
within sight, and many of them within hailing 
distance of us. We tried to have our trunks, 
valises, rolls of bedding, etc., brought or sent to 
us, but it apparently could not be done. At any 
rate it was not done, except in a very few cases. 
Fortunately for me, my old friend — old in friend- 
ship — Major Coe, of the Regular Infantry, was 
aboard, and was one of the few officers who 
had gotten hold of his personal baggage. He 
had a suit of underclothing which he said he 
wanted me to wear, and I took him at his 
word. 

There was no ice aboard. It appears that the 
Quartermaster, who should have seen to the 
supply, never inspected the vessel nor made any 
150 



TAMPA BAY — FORT McPHERSON 

inquiry of the Captain, nor sent him any instruc- 
tions regarding it. 

On the following day, July 5th, we weighed 
anchor and steamed away for the United States. 
In the mean time a surgeon, Major Rafferty, of 
the U. S. Army, had come aboard and taken 
charge of the sick and wounded officers and sol- 
diers, numbering about three hundred. He was 
assisted by a few hospital-corps men, but they 
had practically no time for nursing. There was 
no Red Cross nurse aboard. The demand for 
crutches was partially met by the mate, who 
made a number out of ship's lumber. 

The men had regular rations, cooked at the 
ship's galley. The officers ate, as they had done 
coming to Cuba, in the saloon, paying at the 
same rate, fifty cents a meal. The fare was 
poorer and slimmer than on the way out. I had 
taken only two meals at the passengers' table 
when I had an unpleasantness with a waiter, 
which wound up with my uttering an impreca- 
tion on his whole set, and announcing and re- 
solving that I would never take another meal 
served by any of them. A number of officers 
besides myself were satisfied that they could 
fare better for less money by rustling than by 
patronizing the steward. We united ourselves 
into a mess, which flourished during the remain- 
der of the voyage. How we got our victuals 
need not be told. Suffice it to say that our 
151 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

method would not have worked if we had not 
kept on good terms with the military cook. 

One night I was awakened by a succession 
ofloud reports, which I immediately recognized as 
cannon-shots. Accompanying these sounds was 
a great shuffling of feet and confusion of voices. 

"Why the don't our ship stop?" said one. 

''It is stopping," said another. "I'm if it 

is." Bang! whiz! The shuffling of feet seemed 
to increase. I thought of getting up, but at 
once perceived the uselessness of my doing so. 
If I was going to drown, I might as well lie in 
my warm bed as long as I could. Our vessel 
slackened her speed and stopped. Presently I 
heard the splashing of another close by and a 
voice, "What ship is this?" "The Cherokee!' 
" Why haven't you got your lights out?" I do 
not remember the answer, but the facts were 
that the Captain did not know enough. The 
vessel hailing us was a gunboat on the lookout 
for Spanish blockade-runners. Seeing us going 
along without any lights, it took us for a Span- 
iard and fired across our bow. Our Captain, in- 
stead of coming to, tried to run away. As a con- 
sequence we came near being sent to the bot- 
tom. Our officers answered a few questions about 
the situation in Cuba, and we started off. We 
had not gone far before we were hailed with a 
cannon-shot again. The necessary lights had 
not been shown. With the information obtained 
152 



TAMPA BAY — FORT McPIIERSON 

from a foreign naval officer on board of our 
vessel as a passenger, somebody posted our 
Captain as to the lights required on a hospital 
ship — a white light at the masthead, in addition 
to the usual lights, which, I believe, are a red 
and a green one at the sides, and a white one at 
the bow. There was no Red Cross flag on our 
vessel. The officers talked some of making one, 
but gave it up as impracticable or as unnecessary, 
considering the crippled condition of the enemy's 
fleet. 

We expected to land at Key West, but on the 
night of the 8th, as we approached that point, 
we were hailed by a war-vessel and notified that 
we were to go on to Tampa, where a hospital- 
train would be awaiting us to take us North. 
We cheerfully resigned ourselves to another 
night aboard ship, with the prospect of going 
North on landing. We reached Tampa after 
dark. I was not surprised to learn that the train 
was not ready for us. We waited several hours 
at the dock before landing. The train remained 
near the transport, where we boarded it, and 
there it remained until the next morning. It 
then moved a few miles — to Tampa, if I re- 
member rightly. It was not until after noon 
that it started for its destination, McPherson 
Barracks, near Atlanta, Georgia. We were more 
comfortable than we had been on the water. 
Each officer and man had a berth in a tourist, or 
153 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

emigrant, car. In the officers' car, and I suppose 
in each of the other cars, were a couple of men of 
the hospital corps, acting as nurses. Substantial 
meals were served in a dining-car, and we did 
not have to pay for them. At the stations we 
were the object of considerable interest to the 
people there assembled, but we did not come in 
for any of the organized relief that we had heard 
and read about. At one station, however, a lady 
sent to her house for a quantity of milk, which 
she gave to officers and men. 

There was one incident of our journey which 
I think pretty well matched the one on the 
water which I have told of. It was evening ; 
our train came to a stop, we knew not why. 
Suddenly we heard a loud report, which I sus- 
pected was a torpedo on the track. We looked 
at one another. Some one jestingly remarked, 
" Another cannonade." He had hardly spoken 
when a terrible crash was heard at the rear 
end of the train ; our car seemed to jump about 
fifty yards, and went tearing down the track 
to the accompaniment of crashing at the rear. 
I was seated facing the rear, and kept my seat. 
An officer with his arm in a sling, who was 
standing facing me, was thrown against the back 
of a seat and given a pretty sharp twinge. I 
do not know of any of the officers or men being 
badly hurt, but they were all more or less shaken 
physically, if not morally. We wondered what 
154 



TAMPA BAY— FORT McPHERSON 

was going to happen next, and what our chances 
were of reaching Fort McPherson. Some of 
the officers went to the rear of the train, where 
they saw a mound of debris, the wreck of the 
caboose, completely hiding the engine of the 
train which had run into us. That train, I was 
told, was an express, going at the rate of sixty 
miles an hour. However, we did get safely to 
Fort McPherson, arriving there on the 12th. 
When the surgeon examined me, which he did 
the following day, he found my wounds suppu- 
rating, and my temperature 105 degrees. My 
wounds, with the exception of my little finger, 
had not been dressed since the 4th, eight long 
and tedious days. 



XVIII 
CONVALESCENCE 

Thanks to the skilful treatment of Major 
Blair D. Taylor, U. S. Army, Post Surgeon at Fort 
McPherson, and the excellent nursing of a young 
lady who had volunteered for her noble work, I 
was cured of fever in less than six days, and two 
days later, July 20th, was allowed to leave the 
hospital. Major Taylor kindly applied to the 
War Department to have the sick and wounded 
officers ordered to their homes to await further 
orders. This would have given us mileage for 
the distances travelled. But we were simply 
given leaves of absence, which left us to pay our 
own travelling expenses. 

After spending a few weeks in Baltimore, where 
I had the splinters of my shattered finger ex- 
tracted by a civilian doctor, I went to the Cats- 
kill Mountains to gain strength. It was not 
many weeks before I weighed more than I did 
when I went to the war. I could not help feel- 
ing a little selfish when I read of the horrors of 
the early days at Camp Wikoff, and thought of 
the comfort and attention which I enjoyed. While 
156 



CONVALESCENCE 

convalescing, I received my back mail. One 
letter, mailed and registered in Boston on the 
15th of June, was delivered to me on the 15th of 
September. 

My leave extended to the 20th of September. 
In order not to have to make the journey back 
to Fort McPherson at my own expense, I applied 
to the War Department about the 1st of Sep- 
tember for orders returning me to duty. About 
the middle of the month I received an order 
directing me to proceed to Camp Wikoff, Mon- 
tauk Point, and join my regiment. 



XIX 
RETURN TO DUTY 

En ROUTE to Camp Wikoff, I stopped at High- 
land Falls, near West Point, to visit my father, 
and while there was warned by an army friend 
against the dampness of Montauk Point as likely 
to irritate my wounds. Understanding that my 
regiment was about to leave Montauk for the 
South, I saw the post surgeon at West Point, 
and procured through him an extension of my 
leave, which I spent at Highland Falls. In the 
mean time my regiment was moved to Huntsville, 
Alabama. I wrote to the Adjutant-General for 
another order, assuming that the last one ceased 
to be operative upon the departure of my regi- 
ment from Montauk. I was informed in reply 
that no other order was necessary, that the order 
which I had, together with paragraph 1330 of 
the Army Regulations, required me to join my 
regiment wherever it might be, and would secure 
me mileage. On the expiration of my extension 
I proceeded to Huntsville, and joined my regi- 
ment at Camp Wheeler, named after General 
Wheeler, commanded by General W T heeler, and 
158 



RETURN TO DUTY 

in General Wheeler's congressional district. The 
name has since been changed to Camp A. G. 
Forse, after Major Forse, of the First U. S. Cav- 
alry, killed at San Juan. I sent my mileage 
accounts to the Paymaster- General. After a 
while they came back with an indorsement to 
the effect that to secure mileage I must have 
an order directing me to proceed to Huntsville, 
Alabama. I promptly forwarded the papers 
to the Adjutant -General, but have not heard 
from him, and am still waiting for my mileage 
(December 19, 1898). 

In all directions around the city of Huntsville 
are scattered camps of the regiments and batteries 
of the Fourth Army Corps. There have been 
some heavy frosts, and one morning I found the 
water in my bucket covered with a sheet of ice.* 
It rains more than it shines, and blows a good 
deal. My regiment is camped in a field of pure 
clay, which had been under cultivation. The 
only green things on it now are weeds and re- 
cruits. When it rains we go slipping and flounder- 
ing around, between our tents and picket-lines, 
with several pounds of mud hanging to our 
rubber boots — those of us who are fortunate 
enough to possess such foot-gear. The Govern- 
ment does not furnish rubber boots or rubber 

* Since writing the above it has taken to freezing every 
night. 

159 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

overcoats, nor keep them for sale. Most of the 
men and officers have provided themselves with 
them at their own expense. The men are in 
what are called common wall-tents, three in a tent. 
The floors are just wide enough for three beds to 
lie on them side by side. There are no stoves 
for these tents. I have had a rude high table 
constructed near the cook-fire, where the men 
eat standing in the open air.* Thanks to the 
prosperity of our Exchange (canteen), which may 
be mainly attributed to the businesss ability and 
energy of its present manager, Lieutenant Dixon, 
I have a good company fund, and so am able to 
give the men as substantial and palatable a diet 
as soldiers have any right to expect. To save 
the cook, the Quartermaster- Sergeant, and my- 
self from having to think from day to day and 
meal to meal what to cook or have cooked, I 

* I had hardly penned the above lines when an orderly 
handed me the following communication : 

Circular. HEADQUARTERS TENTH CAVALRY, 

November 16, 1898. 
Troop commanders will designate the place where their troop 
kitchens and dining-rooms are to be built, as nearly as possible 
on a continuation of the line of their troop tents. 

******* 
S. J. Woodward, 
Captain Tenth Cavalry, Com'd'g. 

These buildings were hardly put up and fitted out 
when the regiment was moved to Texas. 
160 



RETURN TO DUTY 

have drawn up the bill of fare that appears 
below. It is not " cast-iron." I occasionally 
add to it or change it ; but it is never departed 
from without my knowledge and approval. The 
coffee is sweetened, but there is no milk to go 
with it. 

BILL OF FARE OF TROOP D, TENTH CAVALRY 



Sunday 



Breakfast. 

Beef, gravy, oat- 
meal, milk, 
coffee, bread. 



Dinner. 

Rice, beans, 

baked tomatoes, 
bread, duff. 



Supper. 

Stewed beef, 
onions, apples, 
coffee, bread. 



„, , Beefsteak, cof- 

Monda y 1 fee, bread. 



Roast beef, gravy, 
rice, sweet-pota- 
toes, bread. 



Stewed beef, 
baked sweet- 
potatoes, cof- 
fee, bread. 



Tuesday 



Beef stew, cof- 
fee, bread. 



C Fried bacon, 
Wed'day \ gravy, coffee, 
(^ bread. 

{Beefsteak, oat- 
meal, milk, 
coffee, bread. 



Friday 



Beef, gravy, 
sweet - p o t a - 
toes, coffee, 
bread. 



Roast beef, gravy, 
mashed p o t a - 
toes, stewed to- 
matoes, bread. 

Roast beef, gravy, 
sweet - potatoes, 
cabbage, bread. 

Stewed beef, Irish 
potatoes, onions, 
bread. 



Beans, bacon, 
tomato soup, 
onions, bread. 



Beef, Irish pota- 
tatoes, stewed 
apples, coffee, 
bread. 

Baked salmon, 
syrup, coffee, 
corn-bread. 

Baked potatoes, 
beef, gravy, 
coffee, bread. 

Beef, potatoes, 
onions, coffee, 
bread. 



{Roast beef, 
baked sweet- 
potatoes, cof- 
fee, bread. 



Stewed beef, cab- 
bage, bacon, 
bread. 

161 



Irish potatoes, 
fried bacon, 
syrup, coffee, 
corn-bread. 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

The accommodations of the officers are luxuri- 
ous compared to those of the men. Each has at 
least one regular wall -tent, and most of them 
have two or three, owing to the absence of many 
officers. They have provided themselves with 
heating-stoves at their own expense. The Quar- 
termaster furnished cooking-stoves, but did not 
have enough to go around. I had to buy both of 
my stoves, and the pipes and zinc for them. 

I believe all the camps except ours had some 
protection from the wind. Ours got the four 
winds of heaven in turn, if not in combination. I 
had hoped that the War Investigating Commission 
would visit our camp on a rainy day. When it 
came to Huntsville I was at Philadelphia, with 
a detachment of the regiment, attending the 
Peace Jubilee parade. The Commissioners did 
not come out to the camp nor see any officer on 
duty with the regiment. 

On the 1 6th of October, the day of my arrival 
in camp, my morning report showed eighty-three 
men present and forty-eight horses, about one 
horse for every two men. About fifty per cent, of 
the men were recruits. The horses were a sorry 
lot. Many of them never had looked well, but 
they now looked pitiable. I have been told that 
they were terribly worried by the flies at Lake- 
land, where they were kept during the campaign 
tied to a picket-line. There was no paddock or 
corral to turn them loose in, and the men avail- 
162 



RETURN TO DUTY 

able for grooming and feeding them were mostly 
recruits. It will be remembered that many of 
these horses were received at Lakeland just as we 
were preparing to take the field, with all the 
trained men of two squadrons dismounted. The 
recruits were kept regularly drilling and target- 
firing, in addition to attending, together with the 
older men, to the horses of the regiment. 

I learned in our present camp that First Ser- 
geant Givens had been commissioned as Second 
Lieutenant in an immune regiment. I found 
Sergeant Elliot acting as First Sergeant, and ap- 
pointed him to that position. I have recom- 
mended him and Corporal Smith for a certificate 
of merit, which brings two dollars of extra pay 
a month, and Corporal Walker for a medal of 
honor. Private Boarman, on returning to the 
troop in front of Santiago, had three ribs broken 
by the roof of a bomb-proof falling in on him. 
At his request I have applied for his discharge on 
account of physical disability. I have several 
men on light duty by reason of wounds from 
which they have not yet recovered. I found the 
troop without nose -bags or feed -boxes. The 
grain fed to the horses was dropped on the 
ground at their feet, which is ordinarily wet or 
muddy. Of course a good deal of the grain 
was lost. The horses were practically not re- 
ceiving their allowance of it. After a while I 
was equipped with nose-bags. But soon after 
163 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

that the number of my horses was increased to 
about two-thirds the number needed, and this 
left me again short of nose-bags. A number of 
my men are in need of gloves, overcoats, and 
other articles of clothing, which our Quarter- 
master has either not at all, or not of the sizes to 
fit them. 

The routine of camp-life is about the same as 
it was at Chickamauga and at Lakeland. There 
is no exercising in large bodies. I understand 
that our regiment is brigaded with certain other 
regiments, but what regiments these are, where 
their camps are, and who commands the brigade, 
I have forgotten, if I ever knew. In our regiment 
the drilling is confined to troop drill and squad 
drill, the latter for recruits. The proportion of 
recruits, I understand, is large in all the regi- 
ments. Few of the enlisted men whom I pass 
on the streets of Huntsville salute me: I do not 
know why, unless it is that they are not in the 
habit of saluting their officers. 



XX 

CONCLUSION 

BEFORE the fall of Santiago the promotion of 
officers especially commended to the War De- 
partment and the consequent overslaughing of 
others was inaugurated. At the battle of San 
Juan the commanders of the First and Tenth 
U. S. Cavalry, whose services dated respectively 
from 1861 and 1862, were under the orders of a 
young man who entered the army in 1886, and 
at the beginning of the war was an assistant sur- 
geon with the rank of captain. Upon the close 
of the campaign and the return of the troops 
to the United States, it seemed as if everybody 
who could be made a brigadier-general was. For 
those who were not deemed worthy of such pro- 
motion, or some other, the only hope of reward 
lay in the brevet appointments which the War 
Department was preparing to recommend to the 
President. A brevet commission does not confer 
any rank nor carry any pay with it. A brevet is 
practically an empty title. The recommenda- 
tions were made, but could not be acted on be- 
cause they required the approval of the Senate, 
165 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

and that methodical body would not delay its 
adjournment long enough to consider them. 

For the soldiers, one immediate effect of the 
declaration of peace was a twenty per cent, re- 
duction of their pay, which had been increased 
in that proportion for the war. A simultaneous 
hardship which they felt perhaps as much as this 
one, but which fortunately proved to be but 
temporary, was their deprivation of beer and 
light wines at post- canteens. The reader may 
need to be informed that the post- canteen is a 
soldiers' club under the general management 
of an officer. It is intended, like the club to 
which, say, the reader belongs, to provide inno- 
cent amusement and harmless refreshment. It 
is a place in which a soldier can go after dark 
and have a sociable pipe and glass of beer or 
wine, and take a hand at pool, poker, ninepins, 
or other game, without having to fight the temp- 
tations of rot-gut whiskey and painted women. 
Some well-meaning, but misguided, philanthro- 
pists had a law enacted which was intended ap- 
parently to prohibit the sale of beer and light 
wines on military reservations. But, as construed 
by the Attorney-General, its only effect is to pro- 
hibit such sale by officers or soldiers. 

Some of the men who had accepted commis- 
sions in volunteer regiments had, after the war, 
to go back to the ranks. When the regiment in 
which First Sergeant Givens, of my troop, was 
1 66 



CONCLUSION 

commissioned was mustered out, he returned to 
duty with the Tenth Cavalry ; but in the mean 
time he had lost his position as First Sergeant. 
At last accounts he was serving as Corporal in 
the troop of which he was First Sergeant before 
the war.* 

Men recommended for medals of honor and 
certificates of merit will, like the officers recom- 
mended for brevets, have to wait for them until 
the next session of Congress, if not longer. In 
the mean time a number of them will have died 
of new wounds and disease, if not of their old 
ones. But who says that our country is ungrate- 
ful to " the man behind the gun ?" 

Sound tactics and strategy depend upon the 
observance of three cardinal unities : 

i. Unity of purpose. 

2. Unity of command. 

3. Unity of mass, or concentration of forces. 

In the Santiago campaign there were two dis- 
tinct purposes, the destruction or capture of Cer- 
vera's fleet and the destruction or capture of the 
garrison of Santiago, neither of which was pro- 
nounced by competent authority to be para- 
mount ; there were two commanders, the naval 
and the military, neither of whom had any au- 
thority over the other ; and there were two sep- 

* When this was written I was away from the regiment 
on leave of absence. 

167 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

arate forces, one on sea and one on land, operating 
as far apart as they could well get from each 
other. It would carry me beyond the scope and 
compass of this work to indicate further than I 
have done the unfortunate consequences of thus 
violating the fundamental principles of the art of 
war. Moreover, the facts and figures, especially 
on the side of the enemy, are not sufficiently 
known to make a scientific study of the campaign 
possible. The official reports and returns of both 
armies, and accurate military maps of the the- 
atre of war, both strategic and tactical, must 
first be available. This is not yet the case 
with our Civil War, which ended more than 
thirty years ago, although more than one hun- 
dred bulky volumes and a handsomely executed 
atlas have been published about it at an im- 
mense cost to the Government. But a fact im- 
portant to the soldier and the citizen has been 
brought home to both, and that is that our mili- 
tary establishment is radically defective in its 
organization. It is generally expected that a 
bill to reorganize the army will be introduced 
and made a law in the course of the present or 
the next session of Congress. Reorganization 
may do a great deal towards preventing the 
bungling and suffering of our late war, but not 
everything. The efficiency of our army de- 
pends upon the spirit that flows into it through 
the Commander - in - Chief and his Secretary of 
1 68 



CONCLUSION 

War from the body politic, upon the interest 
taken in the army by the people, which in turn 
depends upon the popular conception of the 
military necessities of the country, actual and 
prospective. 

The vital principle of the vast military es- 
tablishments of Europe is a general apprehen- 
sion of war. For years past our people have 
thought of war only as a chimera, and our offi- 
cers and soldiers have hardly taken military 
training seriously. If an army is to attain the 
highest degree of effectiveness, it must feel that 
it is liable any day to be ordered to mobilize for 
war. But rumors of war cannot be created and 
kept up at will. There are times, fortunately 
for mankind, when there cannot be any such 
sensation as a " war scare." Especially in such 
times must the impulse to military exertion come 
from the people. In periods of profound peace, 
public interest in the army is the first condition 
to professional interest within the army. This 
points to the need of close relationship between 
the army and the people, and suggests local re- 
cruiting, autumn manoeuvres, and a general de- 
centralization of our military administration. De- 
centralization and the practice of field manoeu- 
vres on a large scale are called for by other 
considerations. Decentralization is essential to 
prompt and vigorous action with masses of 
troops. Field manoeuvres are indispensable not 
169 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

only to the proper training of an army but also 
to its proper inspection. As tests of efficiency 
of commanders and their commands, they should 
be the more severe, and the more rigorously ap- 
plied the greater the decentralization. 

The President has been criticised for certain 
military appointments made during the late war. 
But the President was elected by the people, 
and his appointments had to be confirmed by 
the Senate. Many if not most of the appoint- 
ments referred to were made at the instance of 
Congressmen or of the people whom they rep- 
resent. The responsibility for the short rations 
in Cuba, and sickness at Camp Wikoff, Camp 
Thomas, Camp Alger, Tampa, and other points 
rests for the greater part upon the people of the 
United States, in many cases upon officers and 
soldiers who suffered from them, and are now 
vociferous in censuring' the Secretary of War 
and his chiefs of bureau. 

Every man, woman, and child who ever gives 
a thought to the subject realizes that a civilian, 
inexperienced in war, is not competent to com- 
mand an army, and an American can hardly 
reach the age of maturity without learning that 
the President is Commander-in-Chief of the army 
and navy, and that many, if not most, of our 
Presidents have been devoid of military training 
and experience. I have heard civilians who were 
interested in the state of the army say that 
170 



CONCLUSION 

the President or the Secretary of War ought to 
be a military man. To this there is an insuper- 
able obstacle in the old Anglo-Saxon principle 
that the civil power is superior to the military. 
As Secretary of War, a retired army officer 
would have about the same military aspirations 
and ambition as one in active service, without 
the latter's interest in the after effects of his ad- 
ministration. He would have the bad points of 
an officer in active service without his good 
points. A civilian who had, let us say, been at 
West Point, and served in the army, and was an 
up-to-date theorist in military matters, would be 
the more objectionable the more he made use of 
his military attainments, for any lawyer, poli- 
tician, or gentleman of leisure who should suc- 
ceed him would feel quite able to do what he 
did, and would undertake to do it. The first 
Secretary of War to assume the functions of 
commanding General was Jefferson Davis. Be- 
ing a West Point graduate, and having served as 
an officer of the Regular Army, he proved him- 
self one of the best Secretaries of War, perhaps 
the best, that we ever had. But the consequence 
has been that practically every Secretary of War 
since then has had to prove himself an indiffer- 
ent commanding General. Civilian soldiers are 
a rarity. Their incumbency must be the excep- 
tion rather than the rule, and therefore no sys- 
tem or policy can be securely based upon it. 
171 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

But even if military talent and experience 
were common among our public men, those 
qualities would not be desirable in a Secretary 
of War, for the reason that is implied in the con- 
stitution, that military proficiency is inseparable 
from military ambition. In a Republican Sec- 
retary of War, military ignorance is not a fault, 
but a virtue ; not a defect, but an essential 
qualification, provided that the Secretary of War 
appreciates his ignorance and governs himself 
and his department accordingly. 

What is needed in a Secretary of War is gen- 
uine patriotism coupled with nobility and force 
of character. The Secretary of War is the main 
source, the fountain-head, of military virtue. He 
must make himself felt throughout the army by 
his self-sacrificing devotion to its highest inter- 
ests, and command its admiration by his coura- 
geous resistance to the pressure of selfish politi- 
cians. It goes without saying that his military 
record, if he has one, should be a model to be 
held up to our officers and soldiers for their 
guidance and inspiration. 

The fathers of the constitution must have 
realized that the President cannot, generally 
speaking, be a military expert, but they were re- 
solved at any cost to insure the supremacy of the 
civil over the military power. They meant that 
the President should be responsible to the coun- 
try for the loyalty and efficiency of the army 
172 



CONCLUSION 

and navy, and realized that he could not be just- 
ly held responsible therefor unless he had con- 
trol of every officer and enlisted man in the two 
services. The simplest, not to say the only, way 
to give him this authority was to make him Com- 
mander-in-Chief. 

It was intended that the President should at 
all times be more civilian than soldier, that the 
civilian side of him should always dominate the 
military; that in his dual capacity of civil magis- 
trate and Commander-in-Chief he should typify 
the supremacy of the civil over the military 
power. He is essentially a civilian, and, unless 
he were, could not in accordance with the genius 
of our Government be Commander-in-Chief. An 
officer of the army is prohibited by law from 
holding any civil office. The Commander-in- 
Chief of the army and navy holds the highest 
civil office of the government; and he cannot be 
now a civil executive, and now a military ; he 
cannot for a moment divest himself of his civil 
character. To do so would be to make the mili- 
tary power for the time being irresponsible, or 
supreme. As well might the senior general 
officer of the army be independent of or superior 
to the President. It is proper that the Presi- 
dent as Commander-in-Chief should be inscribed 
in the" Army Register," but in no legal sense is 
he an officer of the army. The President of the 
United States and the governors of the states 
173 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

review their troops in silk-hats and frock-coats. 
It would shock the political feelings of our peo- 
ple to see either in military uniforms, nor would 
they permit either to take command of troops in 
the field. 

It was not intended that the President should 
regularly command the army or navy. His office, 
though nominally that of Commander-in-Chief, 
was intended to be virtually that of inspector, 
with provisional authority to act in emergencies 
as Commander-in-Chief. What he had chiefly to 
do in his military and naval capacity may be 
briefly stated as follows : 

i. To inspect, or oversee, the army and navy. 

2. To insure their harmonious co-operation. 

3. To regulate their expenditures. 

The latter duty is a corollary of another Anglo- 
Saxon principle, that the same hand that holds 
the sword shall not hold the purse-strings. This 
principle is violated just as much when the 
Secretary of War assumes the functions of Gen- 
eral commanding as it would be were the General 
commanding to usurp those of the Secretary of 
War. Congress alone can furnish the money 
with which the President, as Commander-in-Chief, 
or his subordinates, can carry on war. The Com- 
mander-in-Chief, as a civilian, approves or disap- 
proves of the estimates of his military and naval 
subordinates, allots and issues to them as he 
thinks proper the funds appropriated by Con- 
i74 



CONCLUSION 

gress, and passes upon their accounts before they 
are transmitted to an auditor of the Treasury for 
settlement. 

It is perhaps impossible to draw the line 
sharply between safe-guarding the liberties of 
the people and being a war lord. But do our 
presidents try even to stake out that line? 

The organization of the army should embody 
the two ideas of supremacy for the civil power 
and unity of command and responsibility for the 
military power. I am impressed with the con- 
viction that the War Department should be re- 
organized so as to consist of a Secretary of War, 
a number of Assistant Secretaries, and a force of 
civilian inspectors and clerks. The Secretary of 
War might represent the President, as he has 
represented him, so that an order from the Secre- 
tary should have the legal value of an order 
from the President. Under ordinary conditions 
the Secretary of War is a substitute for the 
President. I know there are officers who ques- 
tion the legality of this feature of our military 
government, but I see no objection to it. At 
any rate the Secretary and Assistant Secretaries 
should attend to the fiscal affairs of the army, 
the preparation of such orders as the President 
or Secretary of War might see fit to issue, and 
the commissioning of officers. Under the con- 
stitution the President is charged with the ap- 
pointment of the officers of the army, "by and 
i75 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 



with the advice and consent of the Senate." In 
the performance of this duty he should be gov- 
erned by the recommendations of the General 
commanding the army, except in such cases as 
may seem to him to tend distinctly to the sub- 
version of the loyalty or efficiency of the army. 
The civilian inspectors should have duties gen- 
erally similar to those of the late War Investigat- 
ing^ommission, and powers considerably greater. 

Trcit'dcnl" and 
Corn'mandcr in £hicf 




There should be the grade and office of Lieu- 
tenant-General commanding the army, a Great 
General Staff, and a General Staff — the Great 
General Staff to be subordinate to the Lieu- 
tenant-General commanding the army, and the 
General Staff subordinate to the Great General 
Staff. I have endeavored to outline the general 
plan graphically in the diagram. 

The duties of the Great General Staff should 
be substantially those of similar organizations in 
176 



CONCLUSION 

Europe: to gather and arrange for use all kinds 
of military information about our own country 
and foreign countries, to draw up plans of mobi- 
lization and operation, to search the records of 
our past wars for valuable data and useful lessons, 
to insure the harmonious and efficient co-opera- 
tion of the several branches of the General Staff, 
and to direct the military education of officers 
and men, uniting the military academy, the post- 
lyceums, and service-schools into one system, and 
establishing a school or schools for non-com- 
missioned officers. The General Staff should 
perform the military duties now performed by 
the Adjutant- General's department, Quarter- 
master's department, Commissary department, 
etc., the supply departments being consolidated 
or grouped under one head. The officers of these 
two staff organizations should form one corps, 
known as the General Staff Corps. Their names 
would be borne on one list for promotion. Ap- 
pointments to the General Staff Corps should be 
based upon military ability, and its officers kept 
in sympathy with the line by rotation of duty 
between the staff and the line. 

I wish it understood that I advocate these 
measures in combination and not separately. I 
would not answer for the working of one of them 
without the others. I should expect nothing 
but failure from a General Staff Corps which was 
not subordinated to the commanding General, or 

M 177 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

to which admission might be gained by marry- 
ing a Senator's daughter, or from which, once 
admitted, one would not have to return now 
and then to the line. To say in defence of our 
present system of continual service in the staff 
that the officers of our staff corps have on an 
average served twenty years in the line, and that 
therefore they are not lacking in familiarity with 
the needs of the line, is to ignore an important 
object of service in the line for staff-officers. A 
man who had been divorced from his wife after 
living with her twenty years would not care for 
her any more than if he had lived with her 
but ten, or five, perhaps not so much. If our 
general staff officers had all served one hundred 
years in the line, it would be no less important 
that they should occasionally return to it. It is 
one thing to know what the line needs, it is an- 
other to care whether it gets what it needs. 
General staff officers who are out of the line for 
good, who are never identified with it, are less 
sympathetic towards it, less zealous to supply its 
needs, than such as realize that they will sooner 
or later be in the line themselves, and may wish 
for the very supplies or methods which they are 
now asked to furnish or institute ; that their dis- 
tinction in war may depend upon the service 
that they render in the line, and so upon the 
efficiency of the line. The main purpose of 
having general staff officers serve in the line is 
178 



CONCLUSION 

to make them practically interested in the con- 
dition of the line. 

Familiarity with staff work is essential to ef- 
ficiency as a line officer, and so the general staff 
is a school for line as well as staff officers, and 
officers of the general staff corps serve indiffer- 
ently in the line or in the staff. The terms 
general staff and great general staff are really 
misnomers. They might more properly ho. general 
service and great general service. 

I have lying before me a copy of the Army 
and Navy Journal of November 19th, in which 
I read: "Some radical changes will be proposed 
[in Congress] in the system of staff departments. 
. . . The proposition which seems at present 
to be most in favor with military students is to 
remodel the staff departments in general on the 
German system, but we question whether it will 
be adopted, as there is no analogy between a 
chief of staff to a civilian President changed 
every four years and that of an Emperor trained 
to arms from his cradle and lifted above the 
jealousies and contentions that disturb the judg- 
ment of one subject to the limitations of our 
political system." My plan obviates the objec- 
tion implied above, so far as it seems to me to 
have any force, by placing the general staff un- 
der the commanding General. 

It has been asked: What is the use of a great 
general staff if the separate staff corps, as they 
179 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

now exist, are efficient? The question admits 
that these separate staff corps may not be ef- 
ficient. A great general staff is recommended as 
a means of making and keeping them so. An 
important factor of efficiency in the separate 
staff corps is their relationship one to another, 
their harmonious co-operation, which depends 
upon unity of direction. I have heard it argued 
that the work of each of our present staff corps 
is a specialty, and that no single man can master 
the details of all the corps, and that, therefore, a 
great general staff cannot prove efficient. It is 
not necessary in order to regulate the several 
staff corps to be a specialist in each one. The 
mastering of the main points and principles of 
their several specialties must be feasible, or effi- 
cient command would be impossible. The great 
general staff officer needs a general knowledge 
of the specialties of the general staff. That gen- 
eral knowledge is his specialty. 

The usefulness of the supply departments 
would be promoted by their subordination to 
officers who, at least for the time being, were in- 
dependent of those departments, and authorized 
to determine the character of the supplies to be 
furnished. 

Whether our infantry and cavalry should have 
magazine-rifles or single loaders, smokeless pow- 
der or black powder ; whether they should charge 
with bayonets and sabres or with clubbed mus- 



CONCLUSION 

kets and revolvers; whether our horses should 
be furnished by contract or from depots ; wheth- 
er our rifles and carbines should be sighted so as 
to hit what they are pointed at or not ; whether 
the revolver should have a smaller calibre than 
the rifle and carbine or a larger one, and other 
such questions, should be determined by officers 
competent to give due consideration to the in- 
terests both of those who have to use these ar- 
ticles and of those who have to furnish them. 
The determination of what supplies shall be fur- 
nished may require an impartial view both tac- 
tical and administrative to be taken of all branch- 
es of the service, and this can best be done from 
the office of a great general staff. 

It is not to be expected that all the brightest 
and noblest minds in the army would be gathered 
into the general staff corps, nor is that to be de- 
sired. The superior fitness of general staff offi- 
cers for their particular work would be a matte;." 
of education rather than of selection. 

In the training of an army, uniformity is of 
extreme importance. When a captain gives the 
command, Forivard, march/ it makes little dif- 
ference whether the men step off with the right 
foot or with the left, but it is important that 
they should all step off with the same foot. 
When he wants his company to change direc- 
tion, it matters little whether he commands, 
Right Turn! or, Right Wheel J but it will not do 
1S1 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

for one captain to give one of these commands, 
and another the other. It is to prevent incon- 
venience and consequent confusion, as well as to 
prescribe in regard to many matters what is of- 
ficially held to be the best view, that armies 
have drill regulations, firing regulations, general 
regulations, regulations for field -service, etc. 
But there are matters which lie outside of the 
domain of formal regulations, in which a certain 
uniformity is desirable or necessary. A com- 
mander can do more with a command the more 
he knows what it can do when called on, and 
what it will do when left to itself, or acting in- 
dependently. The ability to reckon with com- 
manders and their commands depends upon a 
knowledge of their mental and physical qualities, 
and this knowledge depends upon a certain uni- 
formity in the training of officers and men. 
The knowledge is the harder to attain the higher 
the commander and greater the number of men, 
and it increases in importance about in the same 
ratio, for its importance is determined mainly by 
the degree of independence of the commanders 
in question. It is especially important that offi- 
cers of the rank and position of chiefs-of-staff 
and commanding Generals should have been 
through a certain training in common, that they 
should have received from some single institu- 
tion, if not one individual, impressions impart- 
ing to them a general unity of mind and charac- 
182 



CONCLUSION 

ter. Our highest officers come some from West 
Point, some from the service-schools (Fort Leav- 
enworth, Fort Monroe, Fort Riley, Willet's 
Point), some from the Volunteers, some from the 
ranks of the Regular Army, some from two or 
more of these different schools. For uniformi- 
ty and higher education among these officers 
we need a military university, where the most 
advanced discoveries of military science, both 
theoretical and practical, are taught, and a com- 
petent body of investigators constantly engaged 
in teaching. The navy has one in its War Col- 
lege. But no " service -school" can give the 
training that is obtained by actual service in the 
general staff. I need hardly add that it is not 
to be had at an ordinary army-post. An officer 
cannot find the time, books, documents, etc., to 
say nothing of the guidance and inspiration nec- 
essary to the profitable pursuit of general staff 
studies while serving with a regiment. 

A general staff corps is the proper finishing 
school for superior officers, completing the unifi- 
cation as well as the development begun at the 
military university. It would be generally recog- 
nized as the brains of the army, and its officers 
as the proper persons to hold the high staff posi- 
tions and commands. Any President, how much 
soever he might be pressed or inclined to ignore 
them for political favorites, would think a long 
time before doing so. The general staff corps 
183 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

would prove a check to the abuse of military 
patronage, and as such alone would justify its es- 
tablishment and maintenance. No longer would 
Congressmen join the army to advance them- 
selves as politicians, or army officers turn politi- 
cians, either in or out of the army, to better their 
military fortunes. Army officers would realize 
that the practise and study of their profession 
are the surest, if not the only road to military 
honors. What sort of spirit can be expected to 
animate a cadet or a student officer in an army 
which, on the outbreak of war, is expanded from 
twenty-five thousand to more than two hundred 
and fifty thousand men without the promotion 
of officers who have served from twenty-five to 
thirty years in the line, while youngsters hardly 
out of the cadet-school, and officers from the staff 
departments, from the retired list, and from civil 
life, are promoted above them? 

The officers of our staff departments are guar- 
anteed by law more promotion in time of peace 
than officers of the line. This has seemed to be 
justified by the theory that in time of war staff- 
officers are confined to their offices or overshad- 
owed by their chiefs, and thus handicapped in 
competing with line officers for distinction and 
promotion. The principal argument by which 
our large staff establishment has been defended 
is that staff duties are particularly difficult and 
important, and that, on the expansion of our 
184 



CONCLUSION 

standing army to meet the condition of war, all 
our trained staff-officers would be needed in the 
staff. But we have seen in our recent war offi- 
cers of the Adjutant-General's corps, the Inspec- 
tor-General's corps, the Medical corps, and the 
Engineer corps take the field as full-fledged regi- 
mental brigade and division commanders, over 
the heads of officers of the line who had been 
drilling and studying and experimenting, under 
the impression that both the staff and the line 
were maintained in time of peace to insure their 
service, each in its proper sphere, in time of war. 
It is a well-known fact that the officers stationed 
in Washington have a powerful, not to say con- 
trolling, influence upon legislation and public 
opinion concerning the army. The reports of 
the heads of departments are regularly commu- 
nicated through the Secretary of War to Con- 
gress and through the press to the people. It is 
the officers in Washington who are most con- 
sulted by military committees, and who are the 
most active and successful in pressing their views 
upon individual Congressmen. It is, therefore, 
in the interest of wise military legislation that 
these officers be truly representative of the army 
in all its parts, and united in a perfect compre- 
hension of the state and needs of the army. I 
can think of no better way of realizing this con- 
dition than the formation of an efficient general 
staff corps. 

185 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

The chief expenditures of war may be grouped 
under three heads — money, blood, and time. A 
nation's military policy should be based upon a 
just appreciation of the relative values of these 
items. Our country is rich. We need not econo- 
mize in money at the expense of either of the 
other items. As a people we are brave and 
patriotic. We shed blood freely for a cause of 
which we approve. But we set a high value on 
human life, and will not spend our own and our 
brother's blood as we will our money. We are 
an industrious, liberty -loving people. Apart 
from the sickness and death incidental to war, we 
object to a state of war on account of its inter- 
ference with our business, and the strain to which 
it subjects our free institutions. Our wars may 
be ever so costly, but they must be short, if we 
can make them so without maintaining too large 
an army in time of peace. The danger to be 
feared from an army is twofold, physical and 
moral. In our country, a large army may do 
more harm by the influence of its deportment 
off duty and by and through its votes than it 
could with its bayonets and bullets. 

The vote of a raw recruit counts for as much 
as that of a perfect soldier. Our army should 
be small and highly trained, rather than large 
and imperfectly trained. We want as few mili- 
tary citizens as possible, and we want our soldiers 
to share the thoughts and feelings of the people, 
1 86 



CONCLUSION 

in short, to represent the people; but we want 
the army equipped and trained according to the 
latest and most approved ideas, with due regard 
to our national characteristics and institutions. 
We want it to be as strong as possible for the 
numbers. There is too much talk just now of in- 
creasing the army, and not enough of improving 
it. Our army might be strengthened thirty per 
cent, without adding an officer or a soldier to it. 
The apportionment of the two factors of mili- 
tary power, numbers and discipline, is a funda- 
mental problem in the reorganization of the 
army. In the interest of discipline it may be 
advisable to make a considerable increase in the 
Regular Army, but I doubt whether in time of 
peace our people will consent to maintain as 
large a standing army as would be necessary for 
order and security at home and in our colonies. 
Our military wants and necessities will be harder 
to figure on than heretofore. It will be neces- 
sary to have the means of promptly expanding 
the force which the people will consent to keep 
constantly in service. Our attention should 
therefore be directed to the perfection of the 
Volunteer force as a reserve for the Regular 
Army, giving it an organization and status for 
times of peace, and leaving the militia to per- 
form those duties within their respective states 
and the United States which are exclusively 
contemplated for them in the constitution. 
187 



SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 

Our people are too much pleased with the re- 
sult of our late war to be disposed to criticise 
the methods by which it was attained, and 
generally too ill-informed upon military matters 
to be able to appreciate the weakness of our 
military system. The great military reforma- 
tions of this century, those of Prussia and France, 
were the consequences of crushing defeat and 
national humiliation. How is ours to come about? 

Experience is a good teacher ; there is none 
more thorough ; but it is sometimes terribly se- 
vere and costly. We may get military wisdom, 
as France and Germany did, from bitter expe- 
rience, but had we not better learn our lesson 
from the gentle muse of history? 

No patching up of our military establishment 
will satisfy earnest and intelligent reformers. 
The radical changes which should be made in 
our War Department will never be instituted or 
initiated by the department itself. The impulse 
thereto must come from without, and it will not 
come until the essentials of military policy and 
institutions are taught in our colleges and public 
schools, or are brought home to us as they were 
to the Germans in 1806 and to the French in 
1870. 



THE END 




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